
Class __E7J3 _ 
Book_Jl7-^i 

Copyright N" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A LITTLE JOURNEY 



TO 



HISTORIC AND 
PICTURESQUE SHRINES OF 

Central New England 



For Home and School, Intermediate 
and Upper Grades 



BY 
FELIX J. KOCH, A. B. 

(MEMBER AMERICAN C.EOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY) 

Author of "A Little Journey to the Balkans," "Little 
Journey to Austro-Hungary," etc. 



CHICAGO 
A. I'LAXAGAX COMPANY 



Kn 



[library of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Received 

MAh 1 11907 

Copyrieht Entry 

Mi^. 't, '907 

CLASS <^ XXC, No. 

coFir B. 



Copyright, 1907 

by 

A. FLANAGAN COMPANY 



A Little Journey to New England's 
Historic Shrines 

When reading the poet's exalted question : 

''Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself has said, 
This is my own, my native land? " 
we have in our minds altered the lines just enough to 
ask whether in this broad republic of ours there lives 
an American boy or girl who has not longed to make 
a pilgrimage to the corner-stones of the nation, — 
Plymouth, and old Salem, the witch city, Faneuil 
Hall, Old South Church, and the hundred and one 
places of which, as far back in our childhood as we 
can remember, we have ])een told and have read. 

Three places every young American probably hopes 
some day to see, — ^Washington, Philadelphia, and even 
more than either of these, central New England, — for 
New England is richer in traditions and historic sites 
than both the other places put together. 

If we intend our Little Journey to this part of New 
England to be a thorough one we must make up our 
minds to ''make a summer of it." It will take many 
days to explore Boston alone, and after that months 
can very easily be devoted to ^lassachusetts. 

We will begin by looking up transportation, and we 
shall find that to-day nearly all the places we most 
desire to see are connected 1)}' trolley, rail or steam 
with Boston. Boston, then, will be our headquarters, 



4 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

and if we are wise we will find rooms in some cottage 
on the Bay, within ten or fifteen minutes journey 
to the city, yet far enough away from it for quiet 
evenings in which to copy our notes and rest peace- 
fully on the verandas. In bad weather, when sight- 
seeing is impossible, our cottage will be com^enient for 
dips in the salt sea and for sport on the sand in our 
bathing suits. 



OUR FIRST DAY IN BOSTON 

Our first entry into Boston, to l:)egin sight-seeing, 
will be a perplexing occasion. Where shall we start? 

Where go 




first? We 
have always 
heard of the 
complexity of 
Boston's 
mazes of 
streets. Dare 
we plunge 
into them 
alone without 
knowing any 
of the land- 
marks, with- 
out having 
" oriented " 
ourselves? 

We resolve on the old plan that has worked so 
successfully in our Little Journeys al^road, of taking a 
car ride and seeing things superficially first and 



f^Wm 



11 II 




MASSACHUSETTS CAPITOL. BOSTON 



CENTRAL XKW ENGLAND 5 

going deeper into them later on. From the wharf 
where the l)road, bkuit-nosed ferry boats (that remind 
us of the vessels plying New York Bay) land the cot- 
tagers of Boston, we board one of the ^lassachusetts 
Avenue street-cars for a long ride across the cit}'. We 
are carried into the shadows cast by the elevated 
railwa}' overhead, and among tall, gloomy warehouses 
and docks. We turn a corner and perceive the first 
evidence of Boston's far-famed cleanliness and civic 
pride, — this is a cart belonging to the street -cleaning 
department, devoted solely to gathering waste paper. 
We are passing the immense North Depot, — four stories 
high, — and enter the shopping district of Boston. 
The stores, we notice, have splendid plate-glass win- 
dows, but the}' strike us as small in comparison to the 
great ''niagazins'^ we have visited in New York, on 
our way to New England. Possibly we have not seen 
the largest, for \ve are entering a cheap-store district. 
People suddenly gaze out of the car windows; we 
follow their example, and notice a curious black 
vehicle with little latticed windows, go by. This, a 
neighbor informs us, is the ''Black Maria," used to 
convey prisioners from court to jail, that their feelings 
may not be hurt by the staring of passers-by. 

We have now reached the famous Public Gardens — 
a pretty park surrounded b}' iron railings — and before 
we know it we arrive at the Boston Public Lil^rar}-, 
one of the most famous institutions in the country. 
We leave the car here and l^egin our sight-seeing in 
earnest. As we saunter up the Inroad walk to the 
entrance, we scan our guide book hastil}' to see what 
it may have to say about this structure. 



6 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 

The Boston Library, we learn, was the first free 
library supported by taxation in the United States, 
and was opened a little more than half a century ago. 
Second only to the Library of Congress, which has the 
advantage of receiving a copy of every copyrighted 
book, the Boston Library is the largest and best 
equipped in the country. The present ]:)uilding, de- 
signed by Mr. Charles F. McKim, was l^egim in 1888 
and not completed until 1895; its cost is estimated at 
more than two million dollars. Looking up we observe 
the ])uilding to l)e of Medford granite, of a peculiar 
grayish-white, built in the style of the Italian renais- 
sance, and in the form of a quadrangle a]:)out a central 
court. The dimensions, we learn, are 225 x 257 feet. 
Its aspect is most impressive. The front is a heavy, 
lower story supporting, as architects put it, an arcaded 
second floor, over which has been set a narrow frieze 
with inscriptions, and a magnificent cornice project- 
ing just seventy feet over the street. 

We enter the l:)uilding l)y one of three arched doors, 
closed by heav}^ wrought-iron gates, noting the hand- 
some medallion seals of the State, the City, and the 
Library set directly under the windows of the upper 
floor. The vestibule we l^elieve to be the finest we 
have ever entered. Floor, walls and ceiling are all of 
pink Knoxville marble ; the floor is inlaid with brown 
and other varieties of stone. We pass through another 
series of door-ways, cut in imitation of the doors to 
the Erectheium or Temple of Athene on the Acropolis, 
into the entrance hall. This is a low, broad vestibule 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 7 

again divided into aisles ])y heavy piers of sandstone; 
corridors lead to the cataloiziuinf!; room on the one 
side and the newspaper reading-room on the other, 
but we will come to these later on; we wish to ex- 
amine this apartment more carefully. The ceiling, we 
note, is a series of vaulted domes in the side bays; 
in the arches, between the piers of the main aisle, 
are cut the names of six great Bostonians. 

We close our eyes and try to guess who are the six 
men in the world of letters that Boston is proud to 
claim as her greatest. Some of us name this man, 
some that — all, of course, mention LongfelUow; then 
we give it up and cop}^ the list — ''Adams, Emerson, 
Franklin, Hawthorne, Longfellow and Pierce." Pos- 
sibly the man compiling the list had his doul)ts as to 
precedence and so cut the Gordian knot l^y placing 
the names alphabeticalh'. In the side domes are 
other names in groups of four; names dear to Bos- 
tonians, and which we will so often meat with on this 
Little Journey that we might as well jot them down 
here at once — Channing, Eliot, Mather, Parker, 
Garrison, Mann, Philips, Sumner, Bulfinch, Bancroft, 
Motley, Parkman, Prescott, Agassiz, Gray, Choate, 
Story and Winthrop. 

On the floor we observe the zodiacal signs, inlaid, 
in brass, in the marble. We glance at the coat-room 
and the elevators on the one hand; the toilet apart- 
ments, public telephones and public stenographers on 
the other; everything most convenient! Beyond is 
the newspaper room where, on racks and tal)les, 
about three hundred daily and eighty-five weekly 
papers are at the disposal of the reader. Opening into 



8 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

this room are the periodical chambers, where over 
fifteen hunch'ed magazines are on file. 

Directl}^ opposite the main entrance of the Library 
we come to the famous stairs of the Library; the 
sides are of yellow Sienna marble, and the steps them- 
selves of a gray marble from France. Half-way up 
the flight there is a landing, with a lion resting on a 
huge granite pedestal on each side ; these were the gift 
of two Massachusetts volunteer companies, in memory 
of their comrades who fought in tlie Civil War. From 
this landing doors of oak open upon a balcon}- over- 
hanging the court, where we may draw a breath of 
fresh air, if so inclined. We, however, are fascinated 
by the paintings overhanging these stairs. Here is an 
allegorical one of ' ' Chemistr}^ " — representing an ex- 
periment in progress in a retort, while l^eyond, the 
decaying body of an animal is fertilizing the soil that 
beautiful flowers may bloom. Next to this is ''Physics" 
— two women receiving good and bad news, respect- 
ively, from the telegraph. "Philosophy'.' is portrayed 
by Plato walking in the garden, addressing his dis- 
ciples; and "Astronomy" by the Chaldean shepherds 
at night, and so on. Above, the wall is divided into 
five high-arched panels, with nine paintings of the 
Muses meeting about a central figure of the ' ' Genius of 
Education" in the center of the dome, by the great 
French artist Puvis de Chavannes. 

We can then enter the delivery room, or the child- 
ren's room, or, more interesting still, drop into Bates 
Hall, the great reading room, two hundred and eighteen 
feet long by forty-two and a half wide. Book-cases of 
oak, eight feet in height, line three walls of this 



CENTRAL XKW KXCLAND 9 

chanihor. mid nhoiit nine thousand reference Ijooks 
are subject to instant call. Xo ])ook may be carried 
from this I'oom, but accommodations are provided for 
over three hundred readers, and there are thirt3'-three 
tables, twelve feet long and about three and a half 
wide, inviting us to sit down and indulge in good 
literature. Each table and chair has a number which 
the reader records on the slip with which he orders a 
l)Ook to be brought to him. We must also see the 
delivery room (where books are applied for, given out 
and returned), for the luminous paintings by Edwin 
Abbey, of the "Quest of the Holy Grail" are here. 
This cycle of pictures, which represents the whole 
search for the sacred vessel, is possibly as fine a series 
as any we will meet on our Little Journey. 

We must, of course, see the children's room, with 
its four thousand volumes stretching along the walls, 
within reach of the young folks, and its tables waiting 
to receive the 3^oung readers. Copies of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, the Address to the King, and 
the Articles of Confederation, with the original auto- 
graphs of the signers, hang on the walls ; and in addi- 
tion, there is one of the original thirteen broad-sides 
of the Declaration, issued to the thirteen original 
states after its adoption. There is another 
children's reference room adjoining, with maps 
and photographs for school work, and a gallery 
of kindergarten literature for teachers of that 
branch. 

On the third floor there are special libraries, but we 
will not examine these, nor the special collections of 
photographs and landscape Uterature, but will take a 



10 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

parting look at the pictures of the Holy Grail, and 
pass out. 

THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS 

We now cross Cople}^ Square to a handsome build- 
ing known as the Museum of Fine Arts — the best 
equipped art gallery in the country, next to the 
Metropolitan Museum in New York. Saturdays and 
Sundays admission is free, but to-day we must pay a 
quarter. The first floor is dedicated to an endless col- 
lection of casts, arranged in chronological order and 
illustrating the histor}^ of art from as far back as the 
year four thousand B. C, to modern sculpture. Up 
stairs, however, are the gems — the paintings. Botti- 
celli, the famous Italian, is represented by his ''Virgin 
and Child With St. John;" Holbein, whom we so often 
met on our European Little Journey, by his ''Donor 
and His Two Patron Saints;" here, too, is Metsu's 
''The Usurer," portraying the old miser taking a 
woman's money from across a table, striking for its 
exquisite workmanship; Van Ruysdael's picture 
of the "Skirt of the Forest" we agree is a pretty 
scene, but it seems much too dark to us. We stop 
before a Rubens — "The Wedding of St. Catherine" — 
painted for an Antwerp church, and then our eye is 
caught by a picture entitled the ' ' Interior of a Butcher 
Shop," which is decidedly too full of customers and in 
which the colors appear to be fading. One thing that 
does hold us, however, is Gilbert Stuart's famous 
Athenaeum portrait of George and ^lartha Washington, 
painted from life. Only part of the back-ground of 
this oil painting is put in; as the rest of the canvas 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 11 

remains bare, the effect is rather crude. Quite a nuin- 
1 )er of Copley's pictures hang close Ijy, as do the origi- 
nals of John Trumbull's "Alexander Hamilton" and 
Page's ''Quincy Adams," which we have so often seen 
reproduced. Famous paintings are on every hand; 
Turner's ''Slave Ship," and ''The Mouth" of the 
Thames;" John Constable's "English Manor," and 
work from the brush of Joshua Reynolds, as well as 
more modern artists, all invite one to linger; but so 
much remains to be seen that we must pass on, and 
we enter the rooms containing prints and water-colors; 
Japanese screens, textiles, and pottery; here are elec- 
trotype reproductions of Greek metal-work of four- 
teen hundred years before Christ was born; relics of 
early Greece and Rome, and rich, opalescent blue- 
green glass, made by the ancient Phcrnicians. A 
curious table is shown us in one room, filled with little 
depressions; this stood in the market-place of Asos, 
and was the standard of liquid measure for the citizens 
of that old Greek town. A stone canopy, with pillars 
resting on the backs of lions, each of which clutches a 
horse, is another unique curiosity. Illuminated missals, 
elegant lacquers and handsome palanquins are beyond ; 
but we prefer to return to the paintings. 

We must have another glance at Botticelli's faded 
colors; at the Turner's "Slave Ship," in its setting of 
stormy sea, sky, and water, so Ijlended in reddish- 
3'ellow tones that it is hard to tell where they meet ; 
beneath the waves the fish devour a drowning slave; 
at Vedcler's wonderful "Lair of the Sea Serpent," the 
monster writhing in a gloomy dime by the sea; we 
would note again the magnificent tapestry effect in 



12 



A LITTLE JOXTRNEY TO 



Lippi's "Holy Family;" with this all too hurried 
farewell glimpse of tliese nol^le masterpieces we emerge 
on ('o})ley Square. 

COPLEY SQUARE 

On one hand is the Library ; across the square looms 
Trinity Church, the most beautiful house of worship 
in the city; it belongs to the Episcopalians, and is 

l)uilt in the 
shape of a 
Latin cross, 
with a half- 
circular apse 
added to the 
east arm. We 
cross over to 
examine the 
handsome 
''Galilee 
porch" on the 
west front, 
and the me- 
morial win- 
dows, in the 
chancel, in- 
side. The sacred pictures in the tower, and the mural 
paintings by La Farge we also greatly admire. 

We are now in the heart of modern Boston, an 
elegant hotel rises by a little park. To the right of it 
is an ivy-covered Girls' School; and beyond this the 
New Old South Church— of brownstone— Ukewise 
covered with traiUng vines. "New Old South" is a 




NEW OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 13 

ron^regational church, the second finest house of 
worship in Boston; it is built of lloxbury stone in 
North Italian Gothic style, with a tower two hundred 
and forty feet high, making it visible from afar. From 
this tower an arcade, filled with tal)lets, crosses the 
front of the church, while over the center of the l)uild- 
ing has l)een placed a huge copper gilded lantern, fitted 
with twelve windows, through which the light filters 
whenever evening service is in progress. 

Boston, like Brooklyn, is a city of interesting 
churches, and here, as in Rome, we can scarce afford 
to omit any on our Little Journey. It is not many 
yards to the Second Congregational Church, interest- 
ing for its antiquity. It was founded in 1649, when 
there was but one other congregation in the cit}^, and 
numbered among its ministers Increase and Cotton 
Mather, and 'Emerson the philosopher. Almost oppo- 
site is another of the handsome hotels of Boston. 

We continue our jaunt a little farther and come 
upon the famous Boston ^'Tech," or, as its official title 
reads, ''The Institute of Technology," one of the 
celebrated schools of the land. Possibly some of us 
have planned to come here some day, and so we will 
enter one of the two large brick buildings on the campus 
— the one a four-story plain edifice, the other some- 
what resembling the Philadelphia Mint. Summer- 
school is in session, so we will not disturb the class- 
rooms; but walking through the dark, wooden-floored 
corridors, glance at the bulletin boards of each year's 
class, which hang on every side. 

It is now lunch time, and we step into a restaurant. 
What do we want ? Something characteristic, of course, 



14 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



baked beans, with a slice of pork, served in dainty little 
blue dishes, and a piece of Boston brown bread — 
that delicious composition that verily melts in our 
mouths. The Bostonians are a temperate people, and 
we note that they frequently take milk or coffee with 
their meals. They do not seem exceptionally friendly 

to the stran- 
ger, but when 
we have been 
introduced by 
some mutual 
friend we find 
the Yankees 
very cordial. 
We have 
now reached 
the Botanic 
Gardens and 
pass through 
them. They 
differ in no 
wise from an 
ordinary 
public park, with beautiful flower beds under the 
ancient trees ; there is little that is really rare, in fact, 
while all of the trees are named, there is nothing to be 
noted except the abundance of ferns, white lilies, and 
hydrangeas — these are now in bloom — but the floral 
display varies from crocus to chrysanthemum, accord- 
ing to season. 

Ball's equestrian statue of Washington stands in 
these gardens. 




INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BOSTON 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 15 

THE FAMOUS COMMON 

Just wliat shall we find the Boston Common to be? 
Possibly most of us have expected a fiat grass plot 
fringed with trees, with here and there a flower-bed. 
Instead we find the Common to be a great park, with 
an encirchng drive shaded by ancient elms and en- 
closed with an iron railing of considerable height. 
Benches are liberalh' scattered about, and we may 
rest, if we wish, and watch the procession of pedes- 
trians going and coming. If we make the tour we find 
first the inevitable grass-plot; then a tiny old ceme- 
ter}^ with very ancient graves, behind which rise the 
stores and theaters of Boston. At a cross-road there 
is a Soldiers' Monument beside a lake — we shall find 
that throughout New England every cit}", great or 
small, has its soldiers' monument — a band-stand and 
a serpentine road; here we ma}' well rest to see what 
our guide book has to sa}^ about this same historic 
Common. 

The Boston Common of to-day includes forty-eight 
acres. In 1640, we are told, the place was a training 
ground for soldiers and a communal grazing place for 
the cattle of Boston. There existed at that time a 
granary and an alms-house, a pillory and a whipping 
post. In 1659 it was the place of execution for Quakers 
and Indians and (incidentally) spies, and persons guilty 
of robber}^ or arson. Then came more strenuous 
times; in 1745 forces were mustered here for the at- 
tack on Louisburg, and fourteen 3'ears afterw^ard Lord 
Amherst's troops were encamped on the site prior to 
their march to Canada. Sixteen -s'ears went l)v, and 



16 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

the Common was converted into a fortified camp, with 
a battery and some seventeen hundred Red Coats 
stationed there. ''Here," says the chronicler, "Ro- 
chambeau's army assembled, and here Washington's 
troops were quartered after the siege of Boston." 
Even to-day the Common resounds to martial feet, for 
annually the Ancient and Honorable Artiller}^ hold a 
parade, and once a yesiv the school boys of the city 
have their procession through the place, for in the 
summer the Common is a recognized public play- 
ground, and even outdoor prayer services are held 
there. 

Formerly the old cemetery in the Common was 
larger and contained many of the prominent citizens 
of the Boston of 1756, but in 1846, and again in 1895, 
when the subway was built, many graves were dese- 
crated. 

We, of course, must see the Gardner-Brewer foun- 
tain on the Common, as also the monument on the 
site of the Boston Massacre — a figure of "Revolution 
Breaking the Chains," with a bas-relief of the massji 
ere — which was really no massacre after all, as we count 
numbers under that term to-day. Another monument 
that will interest us is the Shaw memorial, l^y St. 
Gaudens, erected to the commander of the first Massa- 
chusetts regiment of colored men serving in the Civil 
War (the 54th Massachusetts Infantry), representing 
him in action at the head of his troops. Col. Shaw 
was killed at Ft. Wagner, South Carolina, in 1863. 

Leaving the Common we come out at the corner o^ 
Tremont Street, the busy street of Boston; the State 
House, or Capitol, is just l^eyond, also St. John's 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 17 

Evangelical Church, and another of Boston's great 
hotels. 

THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE — THE STATE HOUSE 

We avill devote ourselves to the first of these, the 
State House, or as I beheve Ohver Wendell Holmes 
dubbed it, ''The Hub of the Universe." Boston's 
State House is one of the typical official Iniikhngs of 
the olden time and style, having been erected after 
designs of Charles Bidfinch, the noted architect, in 
4798. The corner-stone, however, was laid three years 
before, and the annals record that Paul Revere had 
charge of the ceremonies, that Samuel Adams was the 
orator of the occasion, and that the site was John 
Hancock's old cow pasture. We are first impressed by 
the portico, reached by extraordinarily broad and high 
stairs, on which are set statues of Webster and other 
notables ; these were purchased by the school children 
of the city; in this way, for many 3^ears, civic pride 
has Ijeen inculcated into the little folks of the city, 
making them careful of public parks and grounds. 
4 pillar, surmounted by an eagle, stands in the 
grounds on one side; this is known as the Beacon 
^Monument. While the plan of the Boston State House 
is designed after that of the older buildings, these 
were torn down in 1901, when the main part of the 
edifice was re-built and an extension costing five mil- 
lion dollars was added. 

Of course we must visit the State House, so we climlj 
the stairs and enter Doric Hall. A statue of Washinjr- 
ton and one of Gov. Andrew greet us first, and then a 
numl^er of cannon confront us. Two of these are pre- 



.18 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

served in memory of two officers who aided in foment- 
ing revolution against the British at C'oncoid on 
April 19, 1775; and two were taken in the w^ar of 1812. 
Facsimiles of the tomb-stones of Washington's parents 
at Brighton, England, are also here. On the walls 
hang portraits of sixteen of the Governors of the Com- 
monwealth. In the rear, beneath a skylight with the 
blazon of liberty, are set old State seals, and there is 
a case of the Spanish war flags that, by their modern- 
ity, seem strangely out of place. 

In the center of the State House is Memorial Hall — 
a lofty apartment, with a circular dome upheld by 
sixteen pillars of Sienna marble. About this dome is 
a heavy bronze cornice, set with eagles, above which, 
in the glass, is the crest of the State, surrounded by 
the seals of the twelve other original states. If we do 
not know these several seals by heart l^efore we get 
through with our Little Journey we shall be poor ob- 
servers indeed, so frequently are they presented. 

We pass some cases of l^attle flags of the Civil War 
and ascend to the third floor, the seat of the executive 
department; here every Governor has had his office 
since the time of Samuel Adams. We peep into the 
Senate chamber; its galleries are supported by Doric 
columns, and the great dome is upheld b}^ four rather 
broad arches. Over the chair of the President of the 
body, national and state flags are hung, surmounted 
by a gilded eagle, while on the north wall the arms of 
the Commonwealth stand forth. From January 11, 
1798, to January 2, 1895, every House of Represen- 
tatives of Massachusetts met here, but a little over a 
decade ago the lesser body was removed to the new 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 19 

annex. Think of the scenes this chamber has wit- 
nessed; the motions it has heard, and laws that have 
come up for consideration ! We tiy to recall just a few 
of them — they would almost comprise the entire his- 
tory of the nation since it became a nation — but the 
number appalls us. The guides lead us on to the Senate 
reading room and library, the second largest State 
librar}" in the Union — containing about one hundred 
and ten thousand volumes. Among the books gathered 
here is Governor Bradford's famous ''History of Ply- 
mouth," of which we will hear later on. Reading and 
writing rooms, ladies' parlors, reporters' chambers, 
telegraph rooms and post office, one and all, lead off 
from the corridors through which we are ushered to 
the present chamber of Representatives, an apartment 
finished in white mahogany. The rooms throughout 
the building seem deserted, as the legislature is not 
now in session, and onh' those men whose duty it is 
to see that the State House dome is illuminated with 
electricity ever}' night, appear to have anj^thing to do. 
Most of the doors into smoking rooms and the like are 
locked, but Representatives' Hall is open to visit- 
ors. Before each leather chair, in the tiers, is a cherry 
desk with drawers. The room has nothing unusual 
about it. 

WHERE "AMERICA" AVAS FIRST SUNG IN PUBLIC 

AYe LEAVE the State House to come out upon the 
Park St. Congregational Church, painted, as are many 
of the churches of Europe, and of no interest except 
for the fact that in it "America" was sung in public 
for the first time. Close by is Beacon Street, where 



20 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



the homes of some of the wealthy citizens are built, 
and it is but a few steps to the famous Boston Athe- 
naeum, where the great portraits of Washington are 
kept. The Athentrum is a two-story gray stone build- 
ing, one of the sights of the city for its library of 

above 'two 
h u n d r e d 
thousand vol- 
umes in all, 
and for the 
above men- 
tioned paint- 
ings. We drop 
in for a hurried 
glance at the 
latter. The 
door-way ad- 
mits us to a 
flight of stairs 
in the center 
of a quaint old 
hall in which 
are numerous 
busts. In the rear of the building is the reading 
room The library is a private one and contains a 
large portion of President Washington's collection 
of books. 

We are now near to the sky-scrapers of Boston ; in 
their shadow, however, we come upon old King's 
Church, a straight and venerable pile Iniilt in 1689, to 
enforce the right to worship for those of the Estab- 
lished Church; to this place came the naval officers 




PARK ST. CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BOSTON 
Where "America" was First Sung in Pubiic 



CENTRAL NEW EXOI.AND 



21 



of the King; in great pomp, bearing presents from 
William and Mary, and conducting worship themselves. 
In 1710, old King's Chapel was enlarged, and in 1753 
the present 
church was 
])uilt. Later 
on Rev. Free- 
man changed 
it to a Uni- 
tarian house 
of worship, 
but the high 
old pews, the 
tall pulpit 
with the 
winding 
stairs, such as 
are seen in 
Holland, and 
the ancient 
gallery are 
allowed to remain, as also a small cemetery just 
outside. 




WHERE THE FIRST PUBLIC SCHOOL IN 
AMERICA STOOD, BOSTON 



THE FIRST PUBLIC SCHOOL OF THE COUNTRY 

A FEW steps more and we pass the Stock Exchange 
and reach the City Hall, a three-story white stone 
building of rather modern erection. It is already, 
however, much too small for its purpose, so that 
several of the departments of the civic government 
have to. be accommodated in other parts of the city. 
Statues of Quincy and of Franklin grace the front, the 



22 A littlf: journey to 

latter quite appropriatel}^ for on this site stood from 
1634 to 1844 the first scliool in the country — a Latin 
academy. School Street, near by, derives its name 
from this fact. 

THE OLDEST HOUSE IN BOSTON 

We will pass through School Street on our way to 
the Old Corner Book Store, a modern book-shop, occu- 
pying what is believed to be the oldest house at present 
in Boston, the timbers having been set in position in 
1712. The site is that of the home of Ann Hutchinson, 
of whom we will hear more later on, and who was 
banished from the town in 1637. Longfellow, Emerson, 
Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, and Thoreau were, the 
annals state, exceedingly fond of this place and good 
patrons of the book-store. 

OLD SOUTH CHURCH 

One advantage of sight-seeing in Boston is that all 
places of interest are so close together. From the Old 
Corner Book Store to Old South Church, tapering up 
above the stores, is but a step. We hardly need to 
look up Old South Church in our guide book, so familiar 
is its history to all of us. It is built on the site of 
Governor Winthrop's garden, the house in which had 
been torn down by the British for fuel in 1775, and 
the land afterward given to the Third Congregational 
Society for a church ; we are told how the place became 
a favorite one for town meetings of the day. From 
here it was the famous ' ' Indians ' ' left for the in-famous 
Tea Party ; here the British had a riding-school during 
the occupation of the city, and here was installed the 



CENTRAL NEW KNdLAND 



23 



post-office after tlie Boston fire. To-day the tower of 

Old South Church is closed to the public, Init the rest 

has been converted into a museum, which we will 

proceed to visit. In the vestr}-, from which steps lead 

to the spire, several old cannons have been placed, 

while doors give admittance to the church itself. On 

entering we 

notice first 

tliat the old 

pulpit with 

the three 

chairs remains 

intact; a 

painting of a 

Mr. Thatcher 

hangs above 

it, just l)elow 

the window 

through 

which Warren 

entered t o 

deliver his 

oration on 

the Boston massacre — of which we have read in 

our school books. The portion of the church between 

pulpit and pews is occupied by cases of relics set upon 

rather plain tables ; and behind these are chairs for the 

weary. In the rear and on each side a balcony is built, 

under which there are more cases. High above there 

is a galler5^ Of the relics in these various displays 

some are of exceptional interest. Hand-made nails of 

curious forms, Warren's day-book and Inillet l)ox. a 



^MH 
'; ^^M 


^^M 


0i 













OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON 



24 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

tablet erected to the memory of the organization of 
the first Y. M. C. A. in the comitry (effected in this 
church December 29, 1851), odd costumes, money, 
samplers, great green ''calash" bonnets, cradles, spin- 
ning wheels, clocks, sermons, hand sun-dials, and 
paintings on glass — it is hard to say what is not here. 
Sumner's dishes lie near a commission made out under 
George II ; old Bibles repose by the side of Continental 
money and ancient newspapers; American flags of 
1780 lie upon the war-tax bills of the same year, and 
paper dolls, guns, and knockers kesp company with 
engravings and copies of "Poor Richard's Almanac." 
Annually a course of lectures is given in this church, 
so that it is still used for practical purposes. 

THE OLD STATE HOUSE 

Our hand map of the city which we constantly 
consult, covering the streets as we take them, with 
pencilmarks, that we may see each day how much of 
the city has been visited, informs us that the Old State 
House of Massachus'^tts is close by, and we pass round 
the great granite post-office to this quaint relic of the 
olden time, which to-day harbors two railway offices 
on its ground floor and is hemmed in by tall office 
buildings and sky-scrapers. The building itself is of 
yellow brick; it is quite narrow, and dates back to 
1713; ancient heraldic coats-of-arms are set in the 
exterior facade, above which rises the tower which 
was once Boston's land-mark. By a side entry, separat- 
ing the ticket offices from the exhibition rooms of the 
Bostonian Society, we enter the shrine — peeping into 
the society's museum — at old dishes and pewter, old 



("KNTKAL XKW KXCLAND 



25 



\ clothing and, particularly, ancient city maps. Quite a 
nunihcr of pictures of our ancestors are here, also state 
lottery tickets and l)adges, and an especially interest- 
ing hand-bill, threatening to tar and feather an abo- 
litionist, dated 1835. 

We are ''dead tired" by this time, but must still 
trudge up the 
spiral stair to 
the second 
floor, where 
t he a p a r t - 
m e n t s of 
Hastings, the 
old Council 
Room, and the 
Gov ernor's 
ofhce are pre- 
served intact, 
but contain 
only some rare 
old portraits. 

Descending 
the stairs we 
emerge before the new County Court House — a hand- 
some building erected during the seven years prior 
to 1894 at the cost of about four million dollars. 
We find that, with the exception of two small churches, 
the Jail and General Hospital, we have now seen all 
that interests us in this section of Boston, and our 
aching limbs testify that our inspection has been 
thorough. 

We saunter down Tremont Street, glancing in at the 




(ti.i) STA1I-; iiorsi;. I'.os'ioN 



26 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



windows of the handsome stores, and taking a peep 
into the lobby of one of the kirge hotels, famous for 
its Oriental decorations and its glittering brass effects. 
Then we seek one of the little Subway stations in the 
street, go down the stairs, purchase a ticket and drop 
it into a])ox (an attendant watches that no one passes 

without so 
doing) and 
await the cars 
through the 
Subway. We 
shall enjoy 
this ride 
through the 
long, white 
tunnels of 
underground 
Boston, with 
the occasional 
passing car, 
the stations 
with the 
news - stands, 
down to the little ferry that conveys us to our hotel. 
We find that life at the summer hotels of New 
England is much like life in these places throughout 
the country; there is bouillion and salmon, veal, 
peas, and potatoes, tea, cream, and cake awaiting us. 
It will take us long to copy our notes and, fanned by 
the breeze off the bay, we set to work at once, for 
there is still much to be seen in Boston itself on the 
morrow. 




OUR SUMMER HOME 



CFA'THAI. XKW FA'CI.AXD 27 

As WO write we hear tlie sounds of a colt age-city of 
Boston vicinity. Little ones on the verandas tell of 
hunt in (i; the deep-ljlue clams, and of a cat which they 
have seen actually feasting on these bivalves, of rock 
castles they built on the beach, and fish they caught, 
and swimming they enjoyed; ladies and gentlemen 
tell travelers' tales or, if Bostonians, discuss the latest 
news from the city. Over the park from the hotel 
float the notes of dance music, perhaps ''the Boston 
Dip," the characteristic dance of the locality, and now 
and then a graphophone sounds from some neighl)or's 
porch. 

BOSTON AT HOLIDAY-TTME, WHERE THE NORSEMEN 

LIVED 

OvR next jaunt into Boston will be for variety's 
sake to see the gayer side of the city life. We w^ill 
take the cars as far as the Common, descend into the 
Subway, emerging at the Librarj^ and Museum, and 
from there enjoy a long ride through another section 
of the city. We will thus have an opportunity of see- 
ing some of the great Ijuildings — the jMechanics' Expo- 
sition Building and the Horticultural Buildings, the 
Children's Hospital, Armory and Normal School, also 
magnificent apartment houses, set out in l)road lawns, 
and fine homes, embellished wdth wide gardens. At 
one place, while the car stops, we watch with astonish- 
ment the workmen raising a three-story house in order 
to insert two lower stories. Gradually the flats be- 
come less attractive as w^e get in sight of the Charles 
River, and the small stores of Brookline, interspersed 
with homes, replace the more elegant houses. Boston's 



28 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

love of the beautiful, however, is manifest even here, 
and we notice unsightly gas-tanks hidden l)y trailing 
ivy. If, however, we judge Brookline by the unat- 
tractive first few squares we see, we shall soon realize 
our mistake, for soon some of the finest residences of 
the city come into view, and the City Hall of Brook- 
lino, the Pohce Station, Post-office and school, all 
built to harmonize, are splendid structures. We have 
again reached the apartment house district of the 
rich, with porches at each window, on many of which, 
if it be ^londay, newly washed clothes may hang. 
The cars then enter a wide boulevard, with grass plots 
separating the four sets of track from each other, ex- 
tending out of Brookline into the adjoining section of 
Newton. The homes along this boulevard grow more 
and more handsome, the grounds larger, shru]:)l)ery 
and beautiful gardens surround them; the vegetable 
gardens are hidden behind roses and honej^suckle. 
Whenever we cross another car line, as w^e frequently 
do, the conductor stops to call off all the villages and 
suburbs on the adjoining roads, reminding one of a 
railway porter singing his route before departure. 
Far off in the distance we see mountains which, we are 
told, are in New Hampshire. At our side huge sand 
banks of peculiar silt are being removed ])y the dig- 
gers. We then enter a dense old forest, with wild 
roses and ferns at the roadside, and the pewees warb- 
ling in the trees, which leads to our destination — 
Norumbega Park. 

NORUMBEGA PARK 

To-day most visitors to Norumbega go there simply 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



29 



for amusement. Entering, we pass through a rustic 
forest lane leading to an amphitheater, roofed as a 
protection from rain; here we ma}' sit at our ease 
enjoying out-of-door vaudeville performers — 'cyclers 
riding about in a loop on the rim of a Ijarrel, negroes 
singing comic songs, and the like. Continuing through 
the wildwood 
edging the 
Charles (here 
full of canoes), 
we may in- 
spect a small 
zoological 
garden where 
are l^ e a r s , 
camels, apes, 
llamas and 
deer. Cine- 
ma t o graph 
booths are 
close by, and 
there are 
scales and au- 
tomatic for- 
tune tellers. Up on the heights overlooking the 
sluggish, romantic river, a restaurant is l^uilt, where 
we may take our luncheon. 

Sauntering down we come to one of the most inter- 
esting points in the vicinity of Norumbega, a stone 
tower erected by Prof. Horsford to commemorate the 
settlement ])y the Norsemen, on the west side of the 
Charles River, in the year 1000, A. D. Xorumbega, the 



?4^ 




■ 








w 






■^T^ 

■^'^m 







WHERE THE NORSEMEN LANDED. 
CHARLES RIVER 



30 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

guides explain, is the equivalent of Nor'mbega, the 
Indian expression for ''Norbega," an ancient form of 
Norvega — i. e., Norway. The Northmen or Norwe- 
gians, early colonized tliis entire coast, known as 
Vinland. 

When we come to Newport, on this Little 
Journey, we will hear more of the Norsemen and the 
vestiges remaining of their colony. The old Norse city 
of Vinland was situated, it is claimed, near Watertown 
in this vicinit}^; traces of docks and dams, walls and 
wharves may still be seen. Watertown was settled 
definitely in 1630, and is now best known as the seat 
of one of the government arsenals. Possibly it will do 
us no harm to refresh with the guide-book our knowl- 
edge of history in connection with the Norsemen. 
The coast, from the St. Lawrence down to Rhode 
Island, we read, was first seen by Bjarne Herjulfson, 
A. D., 985. Fifteen years later Leif Ericson landed on 
Cape Cod, where remains of Norse forts and canals 
are still discernable. At Norumbega a fort stood on 
the site of the present memorial tower. This place 
was also settled during the sixteenth and seventeeth 
centuries by the Breton French. The Charles, how- 
ever, was discovered by old Leif the Viking, and after- 
ward explored l^y his brother, Thorwald, about the 
year 1003. Colonies came four years after this under 
the lead of Thorfinn Karlsefne, and in 1121 a Bishop, 
Eric Gnuppson by name, w^as installed. For three 
centuries and a half the Vikings traded in timber, fish, 
furs and agricultural supplies, and then gradually 
abandoned the settlement. One thousand three hun- 
dred and forty-seven, the sagas or recorded legends 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



31 



tell us, was \\w date of (loi)artiire of the last Norse 
ship, returning to Iceland. 

On our return from Xorumbega, by way of Newton, 
we may, if we wish, change cars, and visit Waltham, 
a town founded by settlers from the vicinity of an old 
English abbey by that name, and now famous for its 
great watch factories. This, however, is out of our 
path, the more so as we have not yet thoroughly 
visited Boston. 

On our way back to the city the car may be blocked 
by a procession of Orange-men, wearing yellow scarfs 
over their shoulders. The delay seems interminal)le, 
and as we are in an interesting locality we may as well 
get out and see what there is to be seen. 



THE GRANARY 
CEMETERY 

Not a dozen 
feet away is 
the old Gran- 
ary Cemetery, 
so called be- 
cause a town 
granary once 
stood here. 
Nine gover- 
nors of Mas- 
sac husetts, 
three signers 
of the De- 
claration of 
I n d e p e n- 




GltAVE OF JAMES OTIS, BOSTON 
One of the Old Cemeteries 



32 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

dence, Paul Revere, Faneuil, Hancock, and Adams 
all lie here; also the victims of the Boston Mas- 
sacre, and the parents of Benjamin Franklin, 
their graves marked by the stone set by him to 
their memory in 1827. Hancock's grave, however, 
cannot now be identified. Surrounded by tall apart- 
ment houses, the little cemetery, shaded by ancient 
trees beneath whose boughs the grass grows high, is 
peculiarly attractive on a hot summer's day. We 
ramble with delight among the sloping paths ; here we 
find the boulder in which is set the bronze tablet mark- 
ing Adams' grave. It bears the simple inscription: — 

"Samuel Adams, 
Governor and Signer of the Declaration of 
Independence. 
Born, 1723. Died, 1803." 

We then catch a snap-shot of the Franklin obelisk, 
a replica of the first, which time destroyed. The city, 
in erecting this replica, enclosed in it a tablet of the 
original slate, on which we note the long curious ''s's" 
like f 's which were then in use. Old slate slabs, about 
a foot square, just behind the Adams stone, mark the 
graves of victims of the massacre ; while in the corner 
a little tapering monument with flat top, is dedicated 
to Paul Revere.- Passing the grave of Bowdoin, 
founder of the college of that name, we note ten 
graves of the seventeenth century, and then we 
chance on the curious slab, resting on six tiny pillars, 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 33 

marking Gen. Sullivan's grave. We stop a moment 
to copy Revere's epitaph: — 

''Paul Revere. 
Born 
In I^oston, 
January, 1734; ! 

Died, in May, 1818." 

and then are ready to leave. 

IILSTORIC SITES 

Whither next? We are back again in the vicinity of 
the Park Street Church — Lyman Beecher's old house 
of worship. We note that red crosses, marking points 
of interest, are dotted pretty thickly about on the 
map of our guide-book and we think it l)est to follow 
it. On one side is a four-stor}^ cheap-looking red brick 
building, known as the Ticknor mansion. Here La 
Fayette was entertained on his memorable visit in 
1824. Stores now occupy its lower story on the facade 
toward the State House, and store windows have been 
built into the old porch. Awnings bearing advertise- 
ments hang from the upper stories. So have the 
might}" fallen! 

We pass the headquarters of the Unitarian Asso- 
ciation, the Athenirum, the Jacob Sleeper Hall, a 
white stone building containing the offices of the 
Boston University, and the Court House, and come to 
the old Bowdoin house, Burgoyne's headquarters. 
Xearb}^ is the site of the Hancock mansion, where 
Washington and La Fayette were entertained; it was 
demolished in 1863 to make way for modern improve- 



34 A LITTLE JOUllXEY TO 

ments. Close by is the. Somerset Club, on the site of 
the former residence of the painter John Copley. The 
corner of Walnut Street, at which we stand, was the 
birth-place of Wendell Phillips. Every foot of 
ground has its associations. We turn a little way 
down Prescott Street, and see the house in which the 
historian Prescott died. We then enter Walnut Street, 
and there we see the house where jMotley drew his 
last breath. On Chestnut Street the occasional homes 
of Francis Parkman and Edwin Booth may interest 
us. 

Luckily we chance on a guide to Boston — a guide 
in the flesh, and for a half dollar become one of his 
alread}^ numerous party. We are rather averse to 
being chaperoned about, but when it comes to finding 
just which house in a given block is the historic one, 
we are grateful to the cicerone. 

WITH A TOURIST PARTY THROUGH OLD BOSTON 

There are twenty of us, and we follow our leader in 
little companies. He takes us down State House Street 
to the home of Mr. Waine (a grand-son of the signer 
of the Declaration) from which Mrs. Otis reviewed the 
troops on their return from the war. He then leads 
us l^ack into the Capitol and shows some things that 
we, the unitiated, omitted l^efore. The statue of Gov. 
Andrews, for example, he makes especially interesting 
by telling how it was Andrews who gave the standards 
to the troops leaving for the Civil War and who re- 
ceived every one of them back again at its close, many 
of them badly tattered. In the center of the Doric 
Hall he leads to a painting of Otis speaking against 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 35 

the writs — which has just been unveiled. In the mar- 
ble of the floor, too, he points out a curious freak of 
nature — the veins runninii; toj^iether to reseml)le two 
men shaking hands, while in the distance there seem 
to be hills crowned with flag-staffs. In Memorial Hall 
we are shown the famous painting of the return of the 
battle flags, which has been so generally scoffed at as 
incorrect ; the flags having been returned not en masse, 
but separately. 

In the Senate Chamber, too, this man who knows 
Boston so well, leads to the gallery where, for so many 
years, hung the historic codfish, emblem of what was 
tlien New England's greatest industry. On the wall 
here, too, we see a great frame in which are pictures of 
headless men; to these the photographs of Senators 
are affixed on election for their identification by the 
door-keepers. From the windows we can see the 
monument that is being built on Dorchester Heights, 
where Washington's forces beat the British and pre- 
vented their invading Boston; from the Senate read- 
ing-room Bunker Hill Monument is visible. 

THE FAMOUS CODFISH 

We pass through a hallway, lighted by windows 
decorated with the seals of the old Governors, into the 
session room of the House of Representatives; the 
entrance is of white carved marble. The chairs rise in 
tiers, separated by the desks, accommodating the two 
hundred and forty representatives who, with forty 
Senators, make the laws of Massachusetts. Above 
is the dome, with the seals and names of the 
fourteen counties of the Commonwealth, and tliis 



36 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

is lighted up at night, producing a most brilHant 
effect. 

On each side are galleries of white mahogany — 
costing, if we may believe our guide, two hundred and 
fifty dollars per thousand feet. Over the clock, oppo- 
site the speaker's chair, is another gallery where hangs 
the hand-carved wooden codfish — four feet five inches 
long. It was fashioned in 1774, to typify the greatest 
industry along seven himdred and fifty miles of the 
American coast. In one year alone about two hundred 
and eight million pounds of the fish were prepared in 
New Ii^ngland, and many fortunes were thus quickly 
made, giving rise to the term ''codfish aristocracy." 

The codfish naturally l^rings up other questions of 
local history, and as we stand in its shadow, the guide 
tells us of the controversy as to just where "Old North 
Church" stood, from which were hung the signal 
lights directing Paul Revere on his ride, and telling 
whether the British were coming by land or sea; 
many hold that the church was in North Square near 
Revere' s house, that Revere himself was in Clinton 
Street, close by, and on seeing the lights crossed the 
river to Charlestown — where horses awaited — and rode 
thence until captured. Later on we shall follow in the 
steps of Paul Revere on that memorable ride. 

THE LOG OF THE MAYFLOWER 

From Paul Revere' s ride our guide passes easily to 
the story of Bunker Hill, the battle, and the reading 
of the Declaration to the people from the old State 
House. During the story we pass under the silvered 
stairs to the State Library, with the handsome l^ronze 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAXD 37 

folding doors giving access to its hundred thousand 
volumes, and step inside to see one of the most 
priceless books in America — the ''Log" or "record" 
of the "Mayflower." This book is considered so valu- 
able that it rests in a safe with a glass top, through 
which it is visible. We may linger over the small 
writing, in fading ink, set on one side only of the 
pages. The ''Log of the Mayflower" was found by 
Senator Hoar in an English cathedral library, and 
through the influence of our Ambassador, Mr. Porter, 
and the archbishop, was presented to the city of 
Boston by an act of the British Parliament, being 
first carefully photographed in England. This was 
in ]\Lay, 1897. 

The Log contains the record of the Puritans in 
England and Holland, and includes the diary of that 
memoral^le ocean voyage, also the "Compact" or con- 
stitution made on the "Mayflower," and the history of 
the first thirty years at Plymouth. 

Passing out of the old State House we hear of a 
public cafe on its uppermost floor, which stands over 
the site of a fifty-foot reservoir cut in rock so hard, 
that it took twelve years for the workmen to dig 
down ninety feet. The story seems incredible, but we 
jot it down in our note l^ooks en- passant. 

We now pass over Beacon Hill and we find other 
interesting sites and scenes. At one place is the old 
First Methodist Church, where a tablet tells of Wash- 
ington taking command of a regiment on that spot on 
the 2nd, not the 3rd, of July. Beyond, we stand over 
the pits by means of which forty-five hundred tons of 
coal are let down into the State House cellars every 



38 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

fall, to protect the Legislators from the cruel New 
England winters. Our w^ay leads up past the Mt. 
Vernon Church of other days, where Dwight Moody, 
the great preacher, was converted, and the offices of 
the Calumet Mining Company, whose name is so 
familiar. Almost in the shadow of the headquarters 
of the opulent Twentieth Century Club is a four-stor}^ 
])uilding of yellow brick, where the Webster- Ashburton 
Treaty was signed, and but a stone's throw away 
loom respectively the JMen's and the Women's Prisons. 
Such are the lights and shadows of precise old Boston. 

king's chapel 

This time we step into King's Chapel, and standing 
in the aisle between white box-pews with their old cloth 
seats, which face the chancel from three directions, we 
listen to its history — how, in 1689, a church stood 
here, though the present edifice was not erected until 
1753. Officers' and governors' pews at one side, 
statues in the niches and old tablets on the wall, gal- 
leries to right and left, are pointed out — the whole has 
a rich, truly regal aspect such as Andros, who founded 
the parish in 1686, might have desired. It is interest- 
ing to note that the first organ in America was played 
here, and that here was born the congregation that 
to-day worships in beautiful Trinity Church. Howe 
and Gage attended worship in the old church whose 
timbers are inclosed in the more modern structure; 
and Gov. Shirley is buried in the crypt. This was the 
great Tory church in pre-revolutionary days, but after 
the British evacuated Boston only one Episcopal 
minister was left in town, and this congregation was 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



,S9 



forced to join that of Trinity. The old church was 
tlien vacated and used l)y the Americans. Later, wheu 
Old South refused the people the right of holding 
union service there, King's Chapel was again made 
available for such use. One story goes that the Tea 
Party left from Old South Church, and that in conse- 
quence, two 
years later, 
the British 
forbade the 
annual public 
orations being 
held in it. The 
legend then 
says that, ac- 
cordingly, 
Warren in- 
vited the Brit- 
ish officers to 
King's Chapel, 
giving them 
front seats 
for a public 

meeting, while the rear of the church was so filled with 
Americans that the Red-coats dared not remonstrate 
at the bitter speeches against King and crown which 
were made. The window through which Warren 
entered, to deliver the principal address on that occa- 
sion, still remains. Later the British filled the Old 
South Church two feet deep with sand, and so the 
Americans were compelled to worship in the Tory 
edifice while the British were gone. The public 




KING'S CHAPEL. BOSTON 



40 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

funeral of Joseph Warren, whose body was not found 
until 3 782, Avas held here. King's Chapel was Episco- 
pal for ninety-nine years; the Unitarians then occu- 
pied it, and for fifty-two years the Rev. James Free- 
man Clarke was minister. To-da}^, although it is still 
Unitarian, the Episcopal ritual is in use — a case unique 
among x\merican churches. 

In the rear galler}^ of King's Chapel we notice a 
great clock; on the side is a balcony with multi- 
partite windows. From these we oyer-look the site of 
witch trials, and of the flogging and l)anishment of the 
Quakers, who were forl^idden to return under penalty 
of hanging. Here, too, arose the Stray Pig Quarrel — 
a famous quarrel as to whether it w^as the duty of one 
side to mend its fences, or of the other to keep its 
pigs within bounds; a discussion that split the whole 
Commonwealth and actually resulted, Ijetween the 
5^ears 1636 and 1644, in calling into existence the 
legislative bod}' that has become the present Senate 
and House of Representatives. The controversy, need- 
less to say, has not }'et l^een settled. 

Those were stirring times, indeed. Not far from 
here, about 1665, the Baptists made efforts to secure 
religious libert}' — as result of their endeavors they 
were disfranchised, flogged and l:>anished. When, in 
spite of this, the}^ presumed to build a church, the 
governor ordered it nailed up, but they continued 
meeting in the house just the same. Cotton j\Iather 
then charged them with being "licentious and tyran- 
nical" (look up these words in your dictionaries), and 
the governor again ordered the meeting house closed. 
About this time, however, the President of Harvard, 



rEXTKAI> \EW FAT.I.AXD 41 

having witnessed a Baptist ordination, became dis- 
gusted at the persecution, and influenced Judge Sewell 
— of whom we will hear more later on — among others, 
TO speak against it in the Old South Meeting-house. 
The result was religious libert}'. 

That Washington worshipped here is by no means 
the only noteworthy fact connected with King's 
Chapel. In 1818 a famous organ, on which Handel had 
played, arrived, and a society known as the Handel- 
Haydn Society, possibly the genesis of the musical 
spirit in America, was organized. Across the street 
was Faneuil's home, and the wooden grasshopper 
made as sign for it is still preserved in the reliquiary. 
Holmes' and Sumner's pews are shown; l)ut more 
interesting than either of these is the seat of the great 
Tor}', Vassal, who w\as imprisoned for resisting the 
King. When George IV became king he released Vas- 
sal and gave him a grant as compensation for his 
sufferings. The grant was never collected, and now 
his heirs have In-ought a claim against England for 
the grant and accumulated interest, which amounts to 
about fifty million pounds sterhng. Old Vassal was 
the son of the man who materially aided in the de- 
struction of the Spanish Armada. A monument in the 
aisle marks the spot to which prisoners were brought, 
shackled, in the olden time, to attend religious service 
before their execution. 

THE PIKATE KIDD 

As WITH most of the old churches of New England, 
the burial ground of the King's Chapel congregation 
was just outside, and a venerable one it is; the first 



42 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

burial having l^een made in the year 1630, when one 
"Capt. Weldon perished of the small pox." Gov. 
John Winthrop and his two sons, Gov. Endicott, Mary 
Ghilton of Mayflower fame, Key. John Winslow, Col. 
William Daves (who rode to Lexington and Concord 
prior to the battle to warn the people along the route) 
are all buried here. We must confess to a special 
interest in the tomb of Captain Kidd, the pirate, who 
was hung in Boston. Kidd's hidden treasure has set 
people digging all along the Atlantic sea-board for 
nearly two centuries, and here in Boston the guide 
solemnly avers that if one will come at midnight to 
this place, tap on Kidd's grave three times, and then 
ask in a whisper, ''Captain Kidd, for what were you 
hung?" Captain Kidd will answer: "Nothing." 

LIGHT FOR THE FOREIGNERS. 

From King's Chapel we are led through the Court- 
house and offices that open on an arched area, in 
which are a gallerj^ and statuary, to see a curious 
stained window representing " opened-eyecl " justice — 
Boston preferring Justice unbound instead of blind- 
folded as she is elsewhere represented. A bronze 
statue of Choate in one corner reminds us of the story 
that he read his Bible through every two years, and 
that he knew all the psalms by heart. 

We are struck l)y an intensely l)right light ])efore a 
doorway and learn that this is the Municipal Court, 
the light being intended to direct foreigners, unable 
to read English, to the place. A court, a quarter of an 
acre in size, occupies the center of the l)uilding. 

We emerge among some sky-scrapers at just the 



CENTRAL NKW KN(iLA.\l) 43 

place where Gov. Vane liad his home, and very close 
to police hoadquartors, where three commissioners 
have their bureau; they are appointed to take charge 
of the police, by the governor instead of l)y the mayor, 
as is customary in most American cities. Continuing, 
we pass little entrances to the Su])way, and pause to 
examine a handsome statue of John Winthrop, which 
stands very close to the spot where John Han- 
cock's church once stood. A cannon 1)all lodged 
in this church during the Revolution, causing the 
pious to report that the Lord had missed His 
aim. 

We must by no means omit modern Boston, and so 
will take a good look at the Ames Building, the tallest 
in the city — a hundred and ninety feet in height, and 
every one of its thirteen stories occupied. A six-story 
ofhce building close beside it, stands on the site of 
Washington's headquarters while resident in Boston. 
The Boston Museum, close by, is haunted with mem- 
ories of the actor Booth, and we look at the place 
with added respect when we are told that here, in 
1852, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a play which has swept 
the country ever since, was for the first time 
presented to the public. The museum was built 
in tlie daA^s when it was not aristocratic to go to 
theater, but when the "museum" was perfectly 
proper. 

We have made a detour l)ack to King's Chapel, pass- 
ing to the rear of the site of the first public school — 
wdiich we visited before — in order to see the birth- 
place of Everett Hale, and then enter most character- 
istic Boston. 



44 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



THE NARROW STREETS 

As LONG as we can remember we have heard of the 
narrow, winding streets of Boston, built irregularly, 
often following the track of old cow-paths, if we are to 
believe tradition; but so far we have seen none of 
these and wonder whether modern Boston has wiped 
them out of existence. Now, however, we assuredly 
enter upon 
them, and we 
travers e 
streets that 
are narrow, 
deep, dark 
and winding 
with a ven- 
geance. 

The first of 
them is Pie 
Alle}^, lined 
with t iny 
white lunch 
counters, 
where the 
great Ameri- 
can dessert is 
sold to the newsboys, so Boston is still undecided 
whether 'Tie," the edible, or "Pi," a condition of 
type suggesting its effect on the stomachs of the 
boys, is the true name of the alley. In Pie Alley is 
the site of the tavern ''Bell in Hand," at which 
Washington dined in 1795. 

Through narrow streets we come again to the Old 




NARROW STREETS, OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE 
Oldest House in Boston 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 45 

Corner Book Store, and pass the site of Winthrop's 
home, near Old South Cluirch, into Newspaper Row, 
and again find wide thoroughfares and tall buildings — 
the entire quarter having been rebuilt after a great 
fire which devastated Boston in the seventies. On the 
outskirts of this ''fire district'' is a handsome six-story 
office building, which occupies the site of Benjamin 
Franklin's birth place ; on the ground floor is a tailor- 
ing establishment. A great many insurance com- 
panies occupy the adjoining sky-scrapers. In passing 
we may drop into the Boston Post-office, through which 
fifty-eight tons of mail pass every day, to note the 
arrangement of the corridors, the lower half of the 
walls being of wood, the upper of transparent glass, 
so that the rooms are shielded from the public eye, 
while the halls are well lighted. 

THE BANKING DISTRICT 

We are in the "money district" of Boston now, 
but we will find what interests us far more than 
money almost within the shadow of the Naverick 
Bank (famous for a great failure some years ago) 
when we chance on an old red brick structure, standing 
on the site of the wharf — now filled in — where the 
famous Tea Party occurred. One of the docks of the 
modern harbor is mis-named the ''Tea Wharf." 
Beyond is the Custom House, which resembles the 
Philadelphia Mint, and the Stock Exchange. We 
must take a peep into this latter, if only to see the 
room where the great "copper king" after purchasing 
for himself an annuit}' of seventy thousand dollars, 
in order to be able to run the risk of other l:)ankruptcy, 



46 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

''plunged" so heavily into copper stocks that the 
world was amazed. The Stock Exchange l^uild- 
ing, we are told, has exactly one thousand and 
eighty-three offices and cost al:)Out four million 
dollars. 

Again we come upon a familiar friend, the old State 
House, and step out into the highway to note a circle 
of cobble-stones in the street, which commem- 
orates the Massacre. A tiny alley — the smallest stree.t 
in Boston — so narrow as hardly to admit two abreast, 
and so dark it is only occasionally that the sun peeps 
in at all, leads out to the Hancock Tavern — still a sort 
of restaurant — at which, in the good old days, Wash- 
ington and Louis Philippe and Tally rand slept, though 
it is doul^tful if the most unpretentious count of France 
would today be induced to stay in the old yellow l^rick 
structure, with its many fire-escapes, which, in the 
shape of a modern tenement, now occupies the spot. 

FANEUIL HALL 

Another bend of the maze of streets and we find 
ourselves at the market and Faneuil Hall, the latter 
the successor of one burned down in 1761 and rebuilt 
from the proceeds of a lottery. Here the great fetes 
of early Boston were held. The house was enlarged 
to a two-story brick in 1805, and so remained until 
1895, when a third stor}^ was added for a public 
meeting place — the second floor ])eing given over to a 
museum of arms and standards of the ''Ancient and 
Honorable Artillery Company." Outside, where the 
markets now stand, were, in the olden times, the pil- 
lorv and stocks. 



CEXTHAl, M;\\ i:.\(iLAM) 



47 



The clock, by this time, liints that it is supper-time, 
and we drop into a cozy Httle Boston eating;-house. 
There is still time for a brief car ride past the place 
where the pirate, Kidd, was imprisoned, almost oppo- 
site the site of Franklin's Press, through Subway and 
Common, once again, out past Mechanics' Hall, where 
the peace jubilee was lield (three thousand people 
being seated 
in the build- 
ing), among 
the so-called 
Back B a }' 
fens, toward 
BeaconStreet, 
on w h i c li 
Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes 
lived, and out 
at the Charles, 
where the 
Harvard boat 
races take 
place. Across 
the river lies 
Cambridge, l)ut as we wish to see this town later 
on, we return as we have come. 

On the cars we hear folk tell of the centennial or 
l)i-centennial celebration of some adjacent town — for 
New England is very old, as we understand the term, 
and many of the places are preparing for these anni- 
versaries. In the evening if we wish we may journey 
back to the heart of the city for the theater, but our 




FANKUIL HALL. H( »ST()N 



48 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

tired limbs make us prefer an idle hour l)y the sea and 
early rest. 

SHOPPING 

On our next jaunt to Boston itself we will want to 
do some shopping. On our way to the district of great 
stores we may stop off at the South Depot, the largest 
terminal railway station in the United States, to over- 
look its vast train sheds — six hundred feet square. 
Twenty-eight tracks are here, and a porter tells that 
when the great steel roof was put in place its weight 
was said to be nine thousand nine hundred and sixty- 
six tons. 

On our way to the department stores a toy-store 
catches our eye and we wonder at the unusually large 
number of hobby horses — a to}' we had thought to be 
going rather out of use. In the days of ancient Greece 
children played with hobl^y horses, just as they are 
doing to-day in Boston. We w^ill find shopping in the 
big stores of Boston tiresome, for no stools are pro- 
vided for the customers, and a peculiar custom is in 
practice as to sales. In place of paying where one has 
purchased, or having it charged, the clerks are furn- 
ished with little books; on completing his sales to us 
the clerk comes out into the aisle and accompanies us 
to whichever part of the store we may care to visit, 
and gives the clerk there our particular ])ooklet; he 
in turn does the same after recording in it what we 
buy of him ; when we have completed our purchases 
we hand pay for all to the last salesman. 

In a little restaurant in the shopping district we 
order a "])usiness man's lunch," and chicken pie, 



CENTRAL NEW EXCJLAXD 



49 



potato salad, coffee and cream are brought to us. 
Further inspection of the stores shows them to ])e very 
Uke those of other big cities all over the country. 
We ramble about for an hour or two purchasing gifts for 
friends, and then return to our sight-seeing. As we 
have an exceptionally clear day we return to the 
Capitol, and 
climbing into 
the dome, en- 
joy the view 
of all Boston 
and vicinity. 

We note 
one church 
I'at her isolated 
from the rest 
in the pan- 
orama, and 
learn that it 
is the ^lother 
Church of the 
Christian 
Scientists. A 
fellow-traveler in the dome suggests it Ijeing worth 
our while to pay a visit to this edifice, different from 
an}' other we have seen, and so thither we repair. 

THE MOTHER CHURCH OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

The church is rather pretty, built of stone. Enter- 
ing, the organ is opposite the door; there are two 
pulpits for the tW'O "readers"— man and woman — 
and a number of couches before them. Pews fill 




SHOPPERS ON THE ELEVATED, lUjSloN 



50 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

the floor space, while around the sides a gallery 
extends. Here, for over a decade, the Scientists have 
gathered practising the creed originated by Mrs. Mary 
Baker Eddy, or, as they call her, '' Mother Eddy," 
with its vital dogma that all things can be cured by 
Christian faith in prayer. Many converts have come 
to this new sect. The congregation, in contrast to 
many other church bodies, is very diverse in its social 
conditions, comprising some of the wealthiest citi- 
zens of Boston as well as some of the poorest darkies. 
Handsome windows representing Christ curing the 
sick and Mother Eddy crowned, as well as emblematic 
designs, are pointed out by an enthusiastic worshiper. 
We are interested in the service, which consists of 
reading from the ''Key to the Scriptures," compiled 
by Mrs. Eddy; then alternate readings from the pul- 
pits, the gentleman reading from the Ke}^ to the 
Scriptures, the lady reader from the Bible itself; a 
solo is sung — one of the ^Mother's hymns — the creed is 
read and, finally, another hymn is sung by the entire 
congregation. After the service quite a number of 
strangers visit the Mother's room, fitted up for Mrs. 
Eddy when here from her home at Concord, New 
Hampshire. The apartment is furnished in white 
throughout, with dainty doorways leading to bath 
and toilet rooms at one side. The suite is the gift of 
the children of the Scientists, and the names of the 
donors are preserved in a little onyx beehive on one 
of the sills of the apartment. 

8WORDFISH AS FOOD 

On our wav from Boston we will be interested in 



CEXTKAL XKW lONGLAxM) 



51 



watching the landing of fish [it the Tea Wharf. These 
are not the little fish of the middle seaboard, bill 
gigantic fellows, two or three of which will fill a cart 
and form a load as heavy as a man is able to push. 
We ask a bystander about these wonderful fish, the 
like of which we liad never seen. 

" Wliy, them is swordfish," he explains, with a fisher- 
man's usual 
disregard for 
grammar. 
They may l)e 
swordfish, but 
we see no 
sword, only 
huge bluish 
carcasses. On 
inquiry we 
fi n d t h a t 
the fish are 
being taken 
by derricks 
from some 
neighboring 
ships, having 
been caught off the Georges Banks. The heavy, 
thick, black sword — with its oily excrescence — is re- 
moved at once, and the weight of the fish thus reduced 
to about two hundred and fifty or two hundred 
and seventy pounds. It is then brought here and sold 
to dealers who cut it into steaks, selling at from six 
to ten cents the pound, thus furnishing the poor with 
a substitute for the costlier pork. 




LANDING S\VC)1;D1'L'-;11. 1:1US'I(JN 



52 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

The fishermen tell us that there are some seventy- 
five boats here at Boston engaged in sword fishing. 
The fish are located by their fins, which they keep 
just above the surface of the water. When one of 
these is sighted the vessel starts in pursuit and, when 
close enough, a man in the little platform, built out 
just over the prow, throws his harpoon and spears 
the monster, withdrawing the pole, but leaving the 
harpoon itself, with the rope attached, b}' means of 
which other men in the dories follow the fish and 
dispatch him. Occasionally, however, a swordfish 
will turn upon its pursuers, piercing the skiff with 
its great weapon of defense, and then the sailors must 
hasten to reach the big ship if they can. Hauled 
aboard, the head and tail and useless sword are 
thrown overboard and the remainder of the fish is 
then packed in ice until the return. On entering the 
harbors it is first cut in half, the entrails are re- 
moved and the remainder repacked in ice for ship- 
ment. 

Other fish, cod and haddock, abound, but none 
interested us so much as the swordfish. 

While we are in this vicinity if we are lucky we may 
see more of the shipping of Boston. Possibly it is 
near the season of King Edward's birthday and all 
the British ships will be floating their colors ; or, some 
great coal strike may be on and the harbor will be 
filled with the dark, dismal hulks riding idly at anchor. 
Better luck still, the '' Hanoverian," the largest ship 
entering the port, may be in her slip, and those of us 
who have never been aboard an ocean liner may 
inspect her, from the snug little cabins and dining 



CKXTHAL XKW EXdLAXD 



53 



rooms, smoker and i)arlors, \i}) to llio caplnin's hridjj^c 
and the "crow's nest" on the mast. 

We can follow the line of docks l)y takino; the cars 
marked "East Boston," — ever in the shadow of the 
"elevated road." We shall see the Jamaica boats 
unload green bananas and other fruit ; the fish stores 
and the lob- 
ster depots, 
the quays for 
the steamers 
from the Ken- 
nebec and 
^I e r r i m a c 
Rivers, and 
arrive at the 
ferry operated 
by the city, 
charging only 
one-cent fare 
— enough to 
prevent 
people riding 
back and forth 
just for fun. We may cross, if we will, and obtain a 
view of the water-front. 

Returning, we may stop off at almost any point in 
this vicinity, and w^alking inland see another phase of 
Boston life — that of the lowly. 




FISHING SMACKS, BOSTON 



SALEM STREET AND THE GHETTO 

We remember hearing the Harvard ''boys" sing 
the song of *'01d Solomon Levi," the mysterious 



54 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

"uncle" who will let you pawn anything with him to 
raise money, and whose "home is Salem Street." 
Salem Street is in the "ghetto" and tenement district, 
and we find a short walk through that quarter inter- 
esting for the typical Jewish and other foreign types 
it affords. The poor sit out, under second-hand 
clothing and among old stoves that encumber the 
pavement, chattering away and trying to induce the 
passer to buy. Down in this section is the famous 
"Boston stone," — once a painter's mill — a ball of 
stone cut in half and placed in a wall as a land-mark 
in 1738 or earlier. 

We feel l^y this time that we have seen everything 
in Boston itself that is worth seeing, and after the days 
in the city w^e long for a breath of the salt sea air. 
Is there not some place to which we can flee, worth 
seeing, yet wdiere we can rest before resuming our 
Little Journey? 

WINTHROP, A SUMMER TOWN 

We scan the map and notice a spot marked Win- 
throp, on the bay. Thither we go to see the typical 
summer suburb of Boston. 

Not that Winthrop is a part of the metropolis; far 
from it. It is a town unto itself, holding its own town 
meetings, having its own town hall and town lilDrar}- 
and constable. But all the inhabitants of Winthrop 
that do not take summer boarders from Boston are 
Bostonians; it is therefore a typical summer colony. 
We shall enjoy the long avenues lined with the tall 
New England elms and maples that stretch in endless 
vistas to the sea, the hotels with broad verandas, the 



CKXTHAL \i:\V KXCM.AXI) 



55 







cottages, and most of ;tll wntchin^' llic cliiklrcii at 
play. 

How do our little New England cousins spend the 
days at the seaside on the coast of Massachusetts? 
Those of us who have l)een to the New Jersey coast 
or at Old Point and the south will picture them dig- 
ging in the sand and luniting shells, ]:)ut the Massachu- 
setts coast is 
too rugged for 
sucli sport. 
Instead of 
sand tremend- 
ous l^oulders 
rise up, antl 
instead of 
pretty shells 
only the deep- 
l)lue clam 
shell and the 
mussel spout- 
ing its little 
stream will 
be found 
in the few 
spots of sand between the l)oulders. So the children 
build great forts of rocks which they can batter with 
smaller boulders without fear of injuring the defenders; 
and when the temperature of tlie water rises to sixty 
or seventy degrees, which is warm, they bathe or carry 
out to sea little liome-miide sail l)oats for the tide to 
carry l)ack; now and then they will harness one of 
the clumsy horseshoe cra])s to these and make him 



•**»'^-. 



i^.^^-^>^^ 



h\ THK SKA, WIN I llHOl' 



56 



A LITTLE .TOITRXEY TO 



propel their craft. Again there will be diving feats 
from the spring-board for the ]:>oys, while little sisters 
l)ring their dolls or their ])eads to string and look on. 
Follow-my-leader will be played, and ''chase", ''hie 
spy" and other games that New England first gave 
the nation; when they tire of this children walk 
down to the town lil)rary and l)orrow a l)ook to read 

in the ham- 
mock on the 
piazza, while 
their mothers 
do likewise or 
possibl}' em- 
])roider or 
chat with a 
cottage neigh- 
hoY ; and their 
fathers — well, 
for the most 
p a r t , t h e 5" 
are at work 
in Boston. 

Some of the 
young folk 

are quite enthusiastic about the study of natural 
history, and while their comrades are off picking 
cherries, or wading, or watching the officers at 
games of ball in the fort nearl^y, they will be 
searching the beach for jelly-fish to preserve in 
alcohol, or for rocks covered with barnacles, clumps 
of lichen-like sea weed and tin}' shells found best at 
low tide, when the Back Bay is a great meadow of 




A DAY OF RJ-ST, WINTHROP 



CENTRAL NEAV KX(n.AXI) 57 

black ooze, slightly tinged with green \)y the sea weed. 
Women go out with little pails to dig for the clams. 

Now and then contests will be arranged for young 
and old, and then there are walks out on a greased 
mast set sidewise, to a flag at the end, the contest- 
ants arrayed in bathing suits so that it does not 
matter much if they tumble into old ocean or not; 
swimming contests where the Xew Englandcrs keep 
their heads just above the water's surface and the 
feet just beneath it ; f anc}^ swimming, including turn- 
ing somersaults in the w^ater and rolling over in a 
barrel; tub races, bearing the pail out to the goal, 
the dapper swimmers then getting into the tub and 
riding back, using the arms for oars, and other similar 
contests. 

CAMBRIDGE AND ''FAIR HARVARD" 

Our next meandering will be towards Cambridge, 
the suburb famed chiefly for the great university 
founded by John Harvard three centuries ago. From 
Boston to Cambridge is no far cry — you remember we 
came to the Charles one day on one of our Boston 
pilgrimages and only refrained from crossing because 
we did not care to begin with another town until we 
had completed Boston. 

We will go b}' the street cars to the same point, 
crossing the Charles on a bridge which spans the 
original crossing of which the poet wrote: ^'I stood 
on the bridge at midnight," into good little Cam- 
bridge, the town in which, the people say, no drop of 
liquor has been sold for nearly fifteen years. On one 
hand there is a great cracker bakery consuming some 



58 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

five hundred pounds of flour a day and turning out not 
less than fifteen hundred barrels of crackers; on the 
other are amusement grounds and a large condensed 
milk plant. On a side street is the telescope manufac- 
tory of the famous Alvin Clarke, and such of us as are 
scientifically inclined may visit this place. Visitors, 
however, unless astronomers, are not encouraged, and 
the most we can hope to see is the men polishing 
huge lenses resembling large plates of glass, and set- 
ting these in position with innumerable Ijrass fittings. 
Already we are catching glimpses of the college life 
of Harvard. Here on one hand is Beck Hall, a dormi- 
tory for out-of-town students. Over j^onder is the 
home of President Eliot, the head of the university. 
Farther on is a common, a great old park surrounded 
by walls of tlie narrow bricks so dear to New England, 
broken by handsome memorial gates; these were 
donated by different classes twenty-five years after 
graduation and others. Surrounded by these build- 
ings is the park or ''Quad," as it is called (an abbre- 
viation for quadrangle), upon which the older brick 
structures, with the multi-partite windows, face. How 
to keep the names straight, distinct, and remember 
which is which, is sorely puzzling. On one side is the 
President's house; on another the Colonial Club. At 
the corner is Agassiz's home, built for him by the 
university, in which he lived constantly during his 
later years. The guides point out the New Church 
Theological School — the former home of President 
Jared Sparks. The names have been so long familiar 
to us, we try as best we can to individualize and be 
able to recall each place shown. Now we are at the 



CENTRAL \i:W EXCJLAXD 59 

west gate of the grounds, built in 1890 with a bequest 
of ten thousand dollars left by one Samuel Johnstone ; 
it is surmounted l)y an iron cross over the central 
portal. On the pillars at the sides is inscribed the 
fact that on October 28, 1636, the ^Massachusetts 
''General Court," as the legislature was termed, agreed 
to give four hundred povmds to found a college at 
New-Towne (C'aml:) ridge), of which two hundred pounds 
would be paid down and two hundred on the comple- 
tion of the edifice. 

Then on ^lay 2, 1638, the order came to change the 
name of the town to Cambridge, and on May 15, 1638, 
it was decreed that the college should be named after 
John Harvard. 

Ascending the ''Quad," we find the old Wadsworth 
House, broad and deep, with gambrel roof, dormer 
windows and a distinctly colonial air; built in 1726, 
it was for a hundred and twenty-three years the home 
of the presidents of the university, and here at one 
time Washington had his headquarters. Beyond is 
Dana Hall, the law school of the college until Austin 
Hall was built, and now used by the Harvard Co- 
operative Society, of which practicall}^ all the students 
are members, and whose object is to sell l)ooks and 
supplies almost at cost. Other old dormitories there 
are Gray Hall, ^latthews' Hall and jMassachusetts 
Hall, recalling the delightful college tales we have 
read. The student guides tell of their famous occu- 
pants — ^AVilliam Ellery, one of the signers of the Decla- 
ration of Independence, and Robert T. Paine, his 
colleague on that document. Vice President Gerry, 
our first minister to Russia, Francis Dana, Judge 



60 



A littlp: journey to 



Story, of the Supreme Court, Admiral Davis, Samuel 
Oilman, the author of "Fair Harvard", Bancroft, 
Brooks, and a host of others. To the left are still 
other halls bearing venerable dates — Harvard (1765), 
and Hollis (1763), Stoughton (1805), and Holworthy 
(1812). Holden Cliapel was built in 1744; across the 
way are Boylston and Gore Halls, the latter with a 

library of 
four hundred 
thousand vol- 
umes. Then 
come Wild 
Hall, a dormi- 
tory, Univer- 
s i t y Hall, 
Seaver Hall, 
boasting the 
finest recita- 
tion room on 
the grounds, 
A p p 1 e t o n 
Chapel, and 
Thayer Hall, 
the 1 a 1 1 e r 
another home for students. At the end of all these 
begin the museums; first a Semitic ]\Iuseum and then 
the Fogg Art ^Museum close to the north gate, another 
handsome gift portal. In the park is the mythical 
statue of John Harvard, seated in his chair. Strange as 
it ma}' seem, no actual ^ portrait of Harvard survives, 
and so the sculptor has portrayed him as he might have 
been. Harvard's statue is the scene of manv student 




OLD DORMITORY AT HARVARD 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



61 



pranks, a favoritr one being to erown the statue 
with a pan. 



HOW THE STUDENTS DINE 

Behind the Harvard statue rises Memorial Hall, one 

of the handsomest buildings at Harvard — resembling 

an open, two-story feudal hall, with tablets of Harvard 

soldiers at 

the side. 

Memorial Hall 

was erected 

in 1873-6 in 

memory of 

these warriors, 

and serves as 

the college 

dining room. 

Great rows of 

plain l)are 

tables and 

chairs extend 

down the 

h all, a n d 

here students 

are furnished 

four dollars a 




STATUE OF JOHN HARVARD 



their meals at the fixed rate of 
week. When the food is not up to 
standard, custom requires that everyone rattle his 
plates; this is done with nmch vigor and a terrific 
noise ensues. The portraits of Copley and Stuart 
and busts of college benefactors adorn the hall, which 
is lighted l)y magnificent purple stained windows set 
with civic seals. 



62 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

In this building, likewise, is Sanders Theater, which 
will seat fifteen hundred persons, but is too small 
when the great commencement exercises are held. 

By way of the McKean Gate we pass the old ''roost" 
or lounging place of the students, and come to the 
Indian College, to which seminary only three red men 
ever came, and of those three l)ut one remained to 
graduate, so that it has been converted into a dormi- 
tory. It is interesting to note that in this building 
the second printing press in the United States was 
set up, and upon it was printed John Eliot's Indian 
Bible, a book which probably no one is able to read 
to-day. 

STUDENT PRANKS 

All these sites are associated with student escapades. 
To the Quadrangle, for example, on ' ' Bloody Monday' ' 
the freshmen, having first listened to an address from 
the President of the college, repair for a tussle with 
the sophomores, and the l^eautiful elms overlooking 
the scene witness some lively fighting. Nearby are 
the Divinity School buildings, and on the common 
stands an elm beneath which j^oung ministers are 
''ordained" l3y their class-mates — an ordination that 
is far from sober, we may he sure. 

We are now in more modern Harvard, and to right 
and left stretch long, new buildings, containing the 
Peabody Museum of Archseolog}', the IMuseum of 
Comparative .\natomy, or Botany and Mineralogy, 
and the Jefferson Physical Laboratory. A little fur- 
ther is the Law School, then the Lawrence Scientific 
School, the Hemenway Gymnasium and the Philhps 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 63 

Brooks' house, in which rohj;i()iis societies now meet. 
Across the street is Radchffe College, the woman's 
department of Harvard, with its dormitories. 

A turn of the avenue and we come suddenly again 
upon old Harvard, the University Hall — the ''center" 
of Harvard, in which the college president and printer 
had their offices, and at the foot of whose steps, even 
to-day, distinguished guests are received. Occasion- 
alh' the men from some rival imiversity will succeed 
during the night in painting one of the college build- 
ings with their colors; but University Hall is seldom, 
if ever, so desecrated. The roof of Harvard Hall is 
especially interesting; the material of the former one 
was lead, and was melted into bullets to fight the British 
at Bunker Hill; on this roof, too, stood the l)ell which 
summoned the students to class. A favorite prank 
was to fill the bell with tar or tie a live turkey to its 
clappers. ^lassachusetts Hall, in which the history 
classes now meet, formerly had a third story, and was 
then fitted with fire escapes, down which the "boj^s" 
came at night for their nocturnal hazings. 

We emerge through the ten thousand dollar memo- 
rial gate, and now bidding adieu to the Universit}' we 
proceed to the First Parish Church (in whose prede- 
cessor the first Provincial Congress met) and its 
neighl)or, Christ Church, the oldest house of worship 
in Camloridge (erected in 1761). In this latter the 
poet Emerson read his first poem in public, and here 
it was that the organ was melted to supply bullets to 
fight the British. In the crypt of this church the 
Vassal family is buried; the tomb was finally sealed 
as late as 1865, when ten coffins had been interred. 



64 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

Between the two churches is the cemetery with the 
graves of the early settlers and presidents of the 
University. Major-General Gookin, collaborator on the 
old Indian Bibles, Stephen Daye, who set up that first 
printing press, and three of the Concord minute-men 
lie here. 

THE WASHINGTON ELM 

We come now, however, to something of even more 
historic interest than these — the famous Caml:» ridge 
elm, beneath which, on July 3, 1775, the first Presi- 
dent took command of the troops. The elm today 
appears to be dying, and it is with sadness that we 
take a final look at it before passing on to another elm 
on which Washington first unfurled the American flag. 
A flag-staff now serves to commemorate the fact. 

Half a mile away on Soldiers Field, where the ath- 
letic contests are held, there is another larger flag- 
staff, upon which the students have been known to 
hoist a human skeleton from the medical college at 
about mid-night or one in the morning. 

Taking our way between the Gymnasium and the 
Normal School, past them to Hollis, where prayers for 
the college are offered, and the old warehouse in which 
the Battle of Bunker Hill was planned, we come to 
the class-tree of the university; an innocent enough 
looking tree, upon which half as many ])ouquets as 
there are graduates are firmly bound on tree day. The 
seniors have to scramble in order to" get one. Stoughton 
Hall, where students now have rooms, is interesting 
as having been built in 1805 from the proceeds of a 
lottery. Notwithstanding this, such estimable men as 



CENTRAL XKW ENGLAM) 65 

Edward Everett Hale, Cluis. W. Sumner and Oliver 
Wendell Holmes ha\'e ,st()i)i)ed here. In Holworthy 
Hall, by the way, La Fayette, King Edward and the 
Grand Duke Alexis have stayed. In this same locality 
stands the "Re])ellion Tree," marking the site of a 
spring which some one mysteriously dynamited, thus 
effectually abolishing the custom of dipping unpopular 
students into it. Beyond is the Stone Art Museum, 
a building nearly resembling a band-box; one night 

the students aptly painted on its sides ''Prof. 's 

]:)and-box," giving the name of an unpopular instructor. 
There is a little church near by which students formerly 
were compelled to attend, refusal to do so causing the 
culprit to be expelled from the university. 

THE MUSEUMS 

By way of the Lawrence School, where Agassiz 
taught, we enter the zoological museum, in whose huge 
glass cases almost every animal known to man is 
placed and classed according to its position in the 
scientific scale of life; especialh^ interesting to us is a 
huge whale, the edges of whose mouth are fringed 
inside with bristles and rows of what is called whale- 
bone. The whale could take into its vast jaws a 
whole school of fish, allow the water to strain through 
the fringe of whale-bone, and then swallow the re- 
maining mass. In the adjoining Botanic Museum we 
are so fascinated ])y the wonderful glass flowers, fash- 
ioned in exact resemblance of their natural colors and 
shapes, each flower accompanied by its leaf and seeds, 
that we cannot leave until forced by the closing of the 
museums. 



66 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



We are now so near we may as well visit the 
Soldiers' Field on the common ; it is fenced with can- 
non taken by Ethan Allen at Crown Point in 1775. 
The story goes that the following year Washington 
sent General Knox with ox-teams to get these cannon, 

and that they 
were after- 
ward used by 
the Americans 
on Dorchester 
Heights. 

Passing a 
church with a 
rooster-vane 
ornamenting 
its spire, and 
the playhouse 
of lladcliffe - 
interesting for 
its connection 
with Helen 
Kellar, the 

l^lind, deaf and duml) girl who completed the four 
years' course in three— we cross a road, and pro- 
ceeding about one mile, come to a neat cottage, the 
home of John Fisher, the ^'Village Blacksmith" of 
Longfellow's poem ; and then, with but a peep at the 
Observatory and St. John's Theological School, come 
out on Tory Row. 

TORY ROW 

Tory Row derives its name from the great estates 
owned here by the Tories in the pre-revolutionary 




MUSEUMS AT HARVARD, CAMBRIDGE 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



67 



days. During the war they became refugees and the 
Provmcial Governinenl confiscated the huid. Of the 
number, the Longfellow, Vassal, and Lowell houses 
remain; the former was once Washington's head- 
quarters when at Cambridge, and later Cragie, I^dward 
Everett and 
Jared Sparks 
lived there; 
from 1835 to 
the time of 
his death it 
was the home 
of the poet 
Longfellow, 
whose unmar- 
ried daugh- 
ter, Alice, 
now occupies 
it. It is a 
yellow - paint - 
e d frame 
house with 
a portico before the central doorway, and magnificent 
park-like grounds surrounding it. Over the wa}' 
stretches a rather flat Longfellow Memorial Park, 
across which one could formerly look over marshes to 
the Charles River. Near by, the two married daughters 
of the poet live, and the nine grand-children make 
merry on the old lawns. Beyond is the Lechmere 
house, occupied by one of the generals during the 
Revolution, and the Lee house, dating from the time 
of Charles II, while at the end of Tory Row stands 







^ 








"-^^^■1 






Witd 


1 


lu 


B^i 


1 


il ^1 l^lJ^I 


^3 



LOJSGFELLOWri HOME, C'AMl'.lUDGE 



68 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

Elmwood, built in 1760 by Lieut. -Gov. Oliver, but 
famous as the home of James Russell Lowell. 

THE COLLECTIONS AT CAMBRIDGE 

This, however, is only our first inspection of Cam- 
bridge. We shall have to come again if only to look 
through the museums more thoroughly. The Peabody 
Museum especially has much to interest us in the 
endless series of cases surrounding the walls and run- 
ning down the center and about the balconies of its 
great apartments. Indian relics of every sort; re- 
mains of the mound-builders, as to whom authorities 
are undecided whether they were the ancestors of the 
Red Man or a race that has disappeared utterly; 
arrows, scrapers and pottery of pre-historic tribes are 
here by the hundreds. Beyond are samples of the 
work of the modern Indian, arranged according to 
tribes, and comprising basket-work, costumes, head- 
dresses, pipes and canoes. A suit completely covered 
over with small turtle shells especialty arrests our at- 
tention. Rattles of gourds, boards to which the 
papoose is strapped; yellow cloaks covered over with 
long ermine tails, possibly for the papoose of a chief- 
tain ; buffalo skulls painted with the hieroglyphics and 
stuffed with what seems to be a lichen; totems and 
arrow work — there is no end to these things. Still 
farther on are relics of the ancient French cliff-dwellers, 
and we are surprised to find on some of these the form of 
an elephant, carved upon ivory, showing them to have 
had knowledge of this animal or of his relative the 
mastodon. Other curious things abound. There are 
statues from old Assyria, robbed of their heads by 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND G9 

invading armies; Turkish curiosities; tiny Arabic rolls 
that were llie precursors of l)ooks; water l)ottles of 
goat skin ; niununies and nuunniy-cases from Jilg3'pt ; 
little amulets placed with the dead as ornament and 
safeguards, and, remains from Greece and Rome, which 
seem almost modern by contrast. 

Up stairs are the Peruvian mummies, quite a num- 
])er with the long, flowing hair still perfectly preserved, 
and one, at least, sewn in a l)ag of sack-cloth, bound 
with a netting of ropes. In contrast to these rather 
somber objects is a head-dress from a South American 
tril)e, composed of the feathers of gorgeous-hued 
l)irds, probably the most brilliant form of headgear in 
existence. It is hard to say what the Peabody Mu- 
suem does not contain in connection with primitive 
and half-civilized peoples. Aztec, Aleut, Eskimo 
peasant, Japanese, Fiji, and African all have their 
manners of life portrayed. Dancing dolls of copper 
from the Malay Islands, huge, painted masks of wood 
from New Guinea, immense spears with fishes' teeth 
set along the sides like thorns of a whip, from Micro- 
nesia, and strikingly grotesque open-work wooden 
dolls from Arizona, are but a few of the things we are 
able to jot down. 

We pass on to the great General Museum of Harvard 
— an immense four-story building containing class- 
rooms, laboratories, professors' studies and, in addi- 
tion, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, with its 
endless array of cases of stuffed animals. We can only 
summarize what we see and say that the entire natural 
history seems represented; there are, however, some 
exceptional specimens we cannot omit noting. Most 



70 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

interesting of these are the extinct varieties — the Irish 
elk, with whom early man had his troubles; an egg of 
the auk, an extinct bird, its egg so rare as to be worth 
more than its weight in gold; the mastodon, and the 
gigantic eleptis ganesa of India; great sloths and huge 
extinct armadillos. Equally interesting, too, are the 
collections of the bones of animals, demonstrating just 
where they differ and where they resemble each other, 
forming the l^asis of the scientific presumption that all 
animal life originated from one species. One thing we 
will be disappointed in on our visit to the Harvard 
museums generally, and that is that not all the mu- 
seums are open on the same day, so that we must 
come on different days in order to see them all. To-day 
for example, the Geological and Entomological depart- 
ments are closed, and so w^e climb the stairs to the 
third floor of the building where there are more skele- 
tons and still more stuffed animals. A room devoted 
to sea-weeds and corals interests us greatly, but not so 
much as the aggregation of birds just beyond. Fish of 
every size up to a gigantic whale keep company on 
these shelves. As great a curiosity as any we have 
seen is the narwdial, with its one thick bludgeon-like 
tusk. 

Nor is animal nature alone of interest. Adjoining 
this museum is that devoted to botany, where are 
kept the wonderful glass flowers at which we had a 
peep before, but which we now inspect carefully. 
Rare orchids, cacti and common wild flowers by the 
score are here assembled. We would fain linger, but 
there is still another section, the Geological Depart- 
ment, which we now find unlocked and we must at 



CENTRAL NEW KXCLAXD 



71 



least see, the fac-similes of tlu^ jiroat (liamonds, the 
t'lirioiis stone "stihinite" — which rescinl)k's a jKMU'il 
of l)laek ghiss — and some of the rarer minerals before 
passing; on. We note a pecuhar tube, formed b}^ 
hghtning fusing sand together, also petrified woods, 
and especially Iho agates — one variety know!i as 
Smithsoniteis 
of an in d e - 
scribably })r('t 
ty green color. 

At last wo 
bid the n;i- 
tural history 
museum adieu 
and cross 
over to the 
Fogg Art 
Muse u m , a 
stone build- 
ing in which 
statuary and 
p a i n t i n g s , 
old Japanese 
ware, and photographs are preserved for inspection of 
the visitors. Two original paintings by Turner are 
here. • There is a most interesting" collection of photo- 
graphs of the great statues of Germany. })resented by 
the Emperor William, in 1902. Casts are being made 
of these which are also to be given to the university. 

On our way back to the Cam])ridge town "center" 
we notice that signs to trespassers are rather different 
from what they are in other parts of the country. 




om; of riii: .mi:.mokial gates, harvard 



72 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

"This is a private way. Dangerous passing," is the 
way Massachusetts folk phrase the notice. We also 
catch sight of another distinctive feature of life about 
Boston on the porches of tenements. This is what 
seems at first to be a giant umbrella divested of its 
cloth covering and turned inside out by the wind. 
These revolving frames are the clothes-hangers of the 
locality, and are most popular with the housewives. 

MT. AUBURN CEMETERY 

We cannot quit Cambridge without having visited 
Mt. Auburn, the world-famous cemetery of New 
England. The entrance recalls that of Pere La Chase 
in Paris, which we visited on another Little Journey. 
We are requested to leave our kodaks at the gate; we 
then take a guide and pass into the grounds them- 
selves. The graves, we notice, are not elevated 
mounds l^ut level with the sod, and each lot is marked 
by stone flankings. Of course we go first to the grave 
of Longfellow, a stone block with a rounded coping at 
each end set on the crest of a hill, grass all around, 
and the single word ''Longfellow" cut into one side of 
the plinth. All members of the poet's family, except- 
ing his wife, lie here. Rambling down to the foot of 
the hill we come upon two small gray slabs, where 
Lowell and his daughter, Mabel, lie ])uried. One of 
this author's wives, we are told, is buried in the same 
grave with him, for Mt. Auburn is becoming densely 
populated and already they bury two and even three 
deep. A few feet beyond, with a butterfly and an oak 
twig cut on the monument, is the monument to the 
father of modern history, John Motley. Mr. Motley 



CENTRAL NEW EXCEAXD 



73 



is not buried here, but as is the case with President 
Grant on his family lot at Cincinnati, his epitaph has 
been cut here just the same. The road then leads on, 
by a pretty pond, to the resting places of Francis 
Parkman and Henry Durant, the founchn- of Wellesley, 
and thence to a small stone under an oak tree where 
Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes 
and his wife 
lie. The monu- 
ments over 
the graves of 
Martin, the 
discoverer of 
anaesthesia, 
and ("liarlotte 
C u s h m a n 
were erected 
by citizens 
of Boston. 
But it w a s 
Holmes' wish 
that o n 1 y 

a small stone mark his toml) and this request has been 
obeyed. 

Passing up hill among the older vaults and some 
lots fenced with railings, the flower beds are especially 
pretty where they edge the red-stone roadways, we 
note a curious epitaph saying: "Ring the ])e\\, watch- 
man!" We cast a hasty glance at a handsome tomb in 
the Greek style being erected by the family of a w^ealthy 
dry goods merchant of Boston, and at the red-marble 




l.ONCiFELLUVV'S UK.WE, Mcjl.Nl AUBURN 



74 A LITTLE JOX^RNEY TO 

block over Everett Hale's grave. Near where the 
great piano manufacturer, Chickering, is buried, we 
learn that we are no longer in j\It. Auburn but in 
Watertown, and that Mt. Auburn Cemetery is in a 
village of that name and not in Cambridge, as we 
supposed. 

There are so many famous people buried here we 
can scarce do more than glance at their epitaphs — 
Margaret Fuller Ossoli, the writer, Edwin Booth, Rufus 
Choate, Eldridge, the founder of the New York 
Ledger, Fannie Fern, whose grave bears a cross of 
stone covered with a decoration of fern-fronds; Agas- 
siz's grave will particularly interest us, a huge boulder 
of rough granite has been brought from the Aar 
glacier in Switzerland, to serve as his monument ; 
Phillips Brooks, and Boroditch, the geographer, are 
likewise here. There is a pretty crematory of green 
stone with five small spires. 

Leaving the cemetery we are again at Tory Row, 
near Elmwood, the home of Lowell. Elmwood reminds 
us greatly of Longfellow's home — a yellow painted 
three-story frame house, rather plain, with portico in 
the center before the door and a railing upon the roof. 
A row of elms shades the low fence and the lilacs that 
bar admittance to the place from the road. 

A wandering lecturer is to speak at our hotel to- 
night, and as evening is setting in we must now hurry 
home. 

One more pilgrimage we will make to Cambridge 
before we leave New England, to witness the annual 
exhibition of the gymnastic class of the university 
summer school in Hemenwav Gvmnasium. It will be 



CKXTHAl. .\K\V KXCl.AXD 



75 



a splendid opportunity for us to examine the magnifi- 
cent equipment of this institution, to study a Harvard 
audience, and to see the real Harvard students at their 
class work. The men we find appear in short gym- 
nasium suits, tlie women in black bloomers. There 
will be l)oat races in imitation boats rowed across the 
floor, exercises 
on parallel 
and horizon- 
tal bars, a race 
between two 
chains of men 
each trying 
to catch and 
yet not be 
caught by the 
others, and 
the women 
students will 
have a lively 
game of 
"drop-t he- 
ll a n d k e r - 
chief," tossing balls, swinging Indian clul)s, and give 
exhibitions of the latest fancy dancing. After that 
there will be pyramids and tumbling, the performance 
concluding about half -past five. 




1;L.MW0()D LOWELL'S HOME, CAMliKUH.E 



RADCLIFFE 



The audience, the largest part of which is composed 
of students, including several Japanese, scatters im- 
mediately. If we follow some of them we will [main 



76 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

pass the old cemetery in the heart of Caml^ridge, with 
slate slal3s and an eighteenth century mile-stone; then 
continue toward the Soldiers' monument in the park, 
crowned by a private's statue guarded by two old 
cannon, and so, by way of the common and the 
Washington elm, reach Radcliffe, where 3'oung ladies 
pursue their studies. Radcliffe is practically the 
woman's annex to Harvard; the instruction is largely 
by Harvard professors. Little lawns stretch among 
its l)uildings and tablets mark historic spots — among 
others the birth-place of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The 
great elms here again excite our admiration, l^ut we 
note with regret that many are being cut down. A 
passing gardener explains the necessity for this — a 
pestilent insect known as the elm-tree borer gets into 
the trees and destroys them so rapidh' that there is 
nothing to be done l3ut cut them down, and so prevent 
fiu'ther spread of the insects. Everywhere in this 
locality fine trees are l)eing wound with strips of black 
cloth as protection against this death-dealing insect. 
Most of the students, however, make their way to 
what is know^n as the Riverside Recreating Grounds, 
where innumeral)le clul) houses are built amid grand 
old forests on the l^anks of the Charles. We enter one 
of these, the Bachelor's Club, and enter a cozy room 
lined with couches and divans; the walls decorated 
with posters, oars and sportsmen's caps — everywhere 
is an accumulation of handsome, ornamental pillows. 
Giving the attendants the order to take out his canoe, 
our member-friend goes to the locker and secures the 
paddles and a bounteous armful of fancy pillow^s, and 
we go for a lazy drift on the river. One of the Rad- 



CENTHAL M;\\ ENGLAND 77 

eliffe girls sits in the stern and paddles, the young men 
lounging at the other end of the boat, playing the 
mandolin or banjo, singing boat and college songs or 
perhaps operating a little graphophone which supplies 
the music; the canoe is brought into mid-stream and 
then allowed to drift idly as it will. Now^ and then 
the paddles will be pushed into the l)lack, swift water, 
that we ma}' ride up or down stream or get in among 
the overhanging branches where, stretched full length 
of the canoe, the Cambridge man feels he comes as 
near to perfect bliss as this w^orld will ever allow. 
Other canoes, of course, are all about — one ma}' rent 
them for thirty cents an hour — and their varied colors, 
red, yellow or blue, and fanciful names, make the 
scene one never to be forgotten. Kodaks and candy 
are plentiful among the paddlers, and good fellowship 
is everywhere manifest. 

OVER THE ROUTE OF PAUL REVERE 

We have now "done" Boston and vicinity thorough- 
ly enough to satisfy the most painstaking sight-seer. 
We, however, wish now to see other parts of New 
England, especially, being patriotic Americans, to 
tramp over more of the battle-grounds of the Revolu- 
tion. Above all we would retrace the route of Paul 
Revere when he made his memoral)le ride that 18th 
of April, 1775. The starting point on this jaunt is, we 
learn, the Charlestown City Hall; l)ut we do not care 
to visit Charlestown just at present, reserving that 
city for the time when we shall go in a different direc- 
tion. Instead we will cut 'cross-country and so strike 
Revere's pathway before it enters Lexington. 



78 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

To do this we return to Harvard Square at Cam- 
bridge. Here electric cars await, and we speed on to 
Arlington and as far as Concord. Rather delightful 
method of traveling, isn't it, compared to taking to 
horse and dashing down a sultry Middlesex turn-pike? 
We wonder what Paul Revere would say, could he 
come back and make a trip in this manner. We fly 
past the church and the Common, with its ubiquitous 
Soldiers' monument, the pretty tree-sheltered resi- 
dences of Cambridge, and then out into a flat country 
very largely devoted to truck- gardens; reach 
Arlington Heights where, a tablet informs us, the 
Committee of Public Safety met, and just beyond 
whose inevitable soldiers' monument of to-day stood 
the home of John Warren; past the First Con- 
gregational Church, dated 1739, one of those typical 
white New England churches of which the poets 
delighted to write, with the graveyard just behind ; 
on past the stores and small homes of Menotomy 
with the old boulder Rol)ljins Springs Hotel, and 
then out at the terminus at a mile-stone — 
''seventeen miles from Lowell" — where we take 
another car. 

It is hard to realize that all this land echoed and 
re-echoed to the footsteps of warriors little over a 
century and a quarter ago. We first pass through 
rolling country studded with cheap little frame houses, 
then come to fine suburban homes, and we are in 
Lexington, typically New England Lexington, with 
the great elms shading the road, and the white- 
steepled church on the Common almost hidden by 
their branches. 



CENTRAL NEAV ENGLAND 



79 



Lexington's famous common where the 
battle was fought 

We leave the cars at Lexington and cross at once to 
the Common, or, as people therealjoiits are wont to 
call it, the ''Green." A monument — the "Capt. 
Parker Memorial" — representing a soldier standing on 
a n a r c h o f 
boulders, en- 
closing a foun- 
tain, attracts 
our attention 
at the en- 
trance. Not 
far behind a 
pulpit of stone 
is set marking 
the site of 
the first three 
meeting hou- 
ses in the vill- 
age—churches 
erected in 
1692, 1703 

and 1794, respectively. Farther over on the Green 
are some cannon and a boulder, carved with a musket, 
marking the line of the minute men on the eventful 
19th of April, 1775. Near the center of the httle 
triangular green sward there is still another memorial; 
a rather tall sand-stone l)lock enclosed l)y railings and 
almost hidden by ivy. On this a pompous epitaph is 
cut, recalling to all the world that the stone was 
erected one year ])efore the close of tlie eighteenth 




I'AUKEU FOUNTAIN, LLXING lO.N 



80 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



century by the town of Lexington to the memory of 
persons falhng in the battle. About it are Iniried some 
of these victims, moved from their first resting place 
in 1833. 

We cross the Common toward the church, and at 
the corner where the cars pass, are attracted l^y a 
c^uaint frame house with sloping roofs and ivied walls, 

set in an old- 

fashioned 
garden with 
phlox-bor- 
dered paths. 
This, we learn, 
was the old 
residence of 
J o h n a t h a n 
Harrington, 
who, wounded 
on the Com- 
mon on the 
day of the 
battle, drag- 
ged himself 
home only to 
fall dead at the feet of his wife. The old windows of 
the Harrington homestead are composed of many 
sections as if several windows were placed side b}^ 
side, and afford a delightful view of the Green. 

Sauntering along we pass the Buckman tavern, with 
trumpet vine over the doorway; the old hostelry is a 
private home and the smoke curling from the chimney 
in the center of its roof betokens an era of peace. 




THE GREEN, LEXINGTON 



CENTRAL NKW K.XCi l.AXD 81 

We do not linger at the town hall or among the sunny 
stores flanking the main street, down which Paul 
Revere "galloped into Lexington," but pass through 
a side street and climb a hill covered with scrubby 
locusts to the Old Belfry, from which the alarm of 
battle was rung, and which now stands on the knoll 
above the city, a silent memorial of the pre-revolu- 
tionary days. Just as we reach here the twelve o'clock 
bells sound in Lexington, and looking off over the 
fields, still divided by boulder fences as they were in 
the days of Hancock and Revere, it does not take a 
great stretch of imagination to fancy the scene as it 
was w^hen the Belfry stood in the tow^n and gave forth 
its warning. A tablet, almost hidden by trees, records 
the fact that the Belfr}^ was erected in 1761, removed 
to the Common seven years aftenvard, rang the famous 
tocsin on April 19, 1775, and returned to this, its 
original home, in 1891. 

Returning to the Common, we drink in the delight- 
ful play of lights and shadows on the quaint New 
England homes, with their gardens in front and vege- 
table patches behind, coming out upon the Hancock 
house, now a Revolutionarj' museum. Just at present 
the building is closed and so we content ourselves 
with looking through the windows at old cooking 
utensils (a great sausage-filler among the number), 
chairs and beds, and the like. We ''snap" a picture 
of the house, and that we may distinguish it from the 
other historic spots in the village have a passer-l)}- step 
into the foreground, for historic houses in and about 
Boston are very much alike as regards their exterior. 

Our way then leads past the cemeter}', with long 



82 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



low vaults of brick cut into the hill, and we stop to 
sketch a great tablet serving practically as three 
tomb-stones, and bearing an angel's face upon each. 
Many of the Revolutionary soldiers are ])uried here 
and on the grave of each an American flag is kept 

fl u 1 1 e r i n g . 
Hie cemetery 
is a most in- 
teresting spot, 
w i t li open 
c o u n t r y 
stretching to 
the wooded 
hills beyond, 
recalling to 
those of us 
who have read 
Mrs. Fayette 
Smith's de- 
lightful set 
of Juveniles, 
''The Jolly 

Good Times" series, the prospects she describes in 
''old" New England. At one point on this l^urial hill 
there is <x granite block erected b}^ the town over the 
supposed grave of C'apt. John Parker, the hero of the 
battle, who died September 17 of the same 3^ear; 
while in another corner lies one John Hastings, who, 
although taking a valiant part in the battle of Lex- 
ington, did not depart this life until the year 1830. 
Just beyond is a queer series of old slate markers, set 
in concentric circles al^out an open area. 




BOULDER FENCES, LEXIN(nO.\ 



CENTRAL KFAV ENGLAND 83 

II Y M N. 

Sung at the t'ompletion of the Concord Monument, 
April 19, 1836. 



By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's l)reeze unfurled, 

Here once the eml)attled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard 'round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept; 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
And Time the ruined Ijridge has swept 

Down the dark stream w^iich seaward creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 

We set to-day a native stone; . 
That memor}^ may their deeds redeem 

When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, or leave their children free. 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
The shaft we raise to them and thee. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

ON TOWARD CONCORD 

At one in the afternoon the traction leaves Lex- 
ington for Concord, and so must we. On our way to 
the car we stop to purchase a little guide-book, re- 
freshing our memory of the history of the region. 
Meanwhile we are carried along a dusty country pike 
bordered with pastures and stone fences that tell the 



84 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

story of how many boulders the poor New England 
husbandman must blast and dig from the soil before 
he can make it available for crops, and through pine 
woods to the Hamlet of Bedford. Here is the white 
church again, also the white town hall and white farm- 
houses surrounding the Common, where the few stores 
of the place are grouped. Here is, again, a wayside 
inn, but with a modern tennis court; we see some 
handsome homes, country residences probably of 
well-to-do Bostonians; and then we follow again in 
the footsteps of Paul Revere toward Concord -town. 

As we speed on we have an opportunity of seeing 
the great Shady Hill nurseries, the largest in New 
England — sumachs and willows set in long rows 
stretching off in the distance on each side. Corn, 
clover, and asparagus are raised very largely in this 
locality too, and along the Concord River there are 
goodly orchards. 

CONCORD 

Of course, on entering Concord, as on entering 
every other New England town, we are carried past 
the grave yard, Sleepy Hollow, and then on to the 
Soldiers' monument, an obelisk set in the '^square" 
before the church. The hotel and the few stores face 
here; the place is as quiet as a town in Indiana. On 
Sundays it is even quieter, for then even the drug 
stores are closed. 

If we are fortunate we will find other tourists about 
to ''do " Concord, and so can cut down expenses by join- 
ing them in hiring a wagonette, or in the vernacular, 
''barge," and guide. While we are waiting we peep 



CENTRAL NK\\' K\(iLAXl) 



85 



over the wall at a curious tonib-stoue, "designed by 
its color and duralnlily to indicate the character of 
the occupant." Directly over the way, is the 
Wright tavern, still an iini, where Major Pitcairn was 
staying when at dinner he put his finger into his 



dass of rul)>' wine, and made the boast that in just 
w i s V 



s u c h 

would he stir 
the Yankee 
blood— a vain 
])oast, for he 
"it was that 
died." The 
Iniilding, dat- 
i n g fro ni 
1747, is still 
an inn, but 
the present 
l)uilding, of 
somber as- 
pect, does not 
suggest Tory 
banquets. 

Of course the tavern faces the church, and there is a 
velvety lawn between, set with a tablet to tell the tale 
that in the old house of worship on this spot there 
met, on Octol)er 1, 1774, under the presidency of 
John Hancock, the first Provincial Congress of 
Massachusetts, which prepared the way for the Rev- 
olution. 

Our wagonette now drives up, and in company with 
congenial tourists we l)egin sight-seeing in what some 




WHARE MAJOR PITCAIKN MADE HIS BOAST 



86 



A LITTLE .TOX^RXEY TO 



are pleased to call the "Most Historic Little Town in 
the World." 

We have gone but a few yards down an avenue of 
ancient trees when the carriage halts, and the oldest 
house in the village is pointed out to us; it dates back 
to 1644. ^lodern shingling covers the original frame, 

except just 
over the door, 
where a bullet 
hole from the 
t r o u 1) 1 o u s 
times is pre- 
served. The 
frame work of 
the 1) nil ding 
is set horizon- 
tally, which 
strikes us as 
rather odd. 

Almost over 
the way on 
the left, is 
Hawthorne's 
''Old Manse," set far back in a great garden, access to 
which is forbidden the sight-seer. The ''Old Manse" 
itself is a low two-story cottage, blackened by weather 
and age; from the road the guide bids us observe that ' 
one may look directly through the house to the rear, 
whence the grandfather of the philosopher, Emerson, 
watched the battle of Concord. 

We take the road to the battle-ground; there is a 
footpath on each side bordered by rows of trees, so 




STATUE OF THE MINUTE MAN, CONCORD 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



87 



that the four great series of trunks form an avenue 
equalled only ))y the ap})roa('h to the famous "Iluis 
in Buseh," in Holland. Ahead stands the l^attle 
Monument, and behind it the frame woik of Old North 
Bridge. Just before erossing this bridge, which today 
looks nuu'h like any other frame bridge in New ]']ngland, 
a slab is point- 
ed out to us, 
a mo n g the 
pines, mark- 
ing the graves 
of twoh^nglish 
soldiers who 
fell in the en- 
counter. At 
the other end 
of the bridge 
in the center 
of a circular 
roadway is 
the statue 
of the ''Min- 
u t e m a n , " 

inscribed with Emerson's famous poem, familiar to 
every American school-l3oy: 

''By the rude bridge which arched the flood.'* 
The whole vista is historic ; on one side the river, 
on the other the house where the Americans formed 
for the battle, and bej'ond, the home of Major Buttrick, 
farther away the battle-fields, now smiling meadows 
and pastures. 

It would seem that one cannot see a New P^ngland 




ROAD TO OLD NOUTH l'.lill)C. 



CoNCOKD 



88 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



town without seeing the graveyard, for hardly have 
we sated our e3"es on this historic spot, when we wheel 
about, back almost to the heart of town, and on to 
Sleepy Hollow, the famous little cemetery nestling at 
the foot of an oak more than four hundred years of 
age. 

SLEEPY HOLLOW 

The visit to Sleepy Hollow is as delightful as it is 
interesting; it skirts the edge of a liill overlooking 

the entire 
b u r 3^ i n g 
ground of to- 
day, where are 
the graves of 
several sol- 
diers who fell 
in the Civil 
War, and con- 
tinues into 
the older 
section. First 
a small tree- 
s t u mp of 
marble with 
a vine trail- 
ing round it is 
pointed out as the resting place of John Bull, the 
original cultivator of the famous Concord grape of 
which we are so fond ; he produced it by experiment- 
ing with the wild grapes of the vicinity. Over the hill 
beneath a cedar, is Emerson's grave, marked l)y a 
block of rough pink quartz with a tablet of bronze 




OLD NORTH BRIDGE, CONCORD 



CENTRAL NEW FACILAXI) 



89 



set in one side. Hawthorne lies in n con km- nc^irly 
surrounded In' a hedj2;e of low arbor vitas there is no 
mound, only a small headstone marks his resting 
place. Thoreau, too, lies near, and it is hut a step to 
the graves of the Alcotts; that of Louisa, the author 
of "Under the Lilacs," "Jo's Boys," and other 
stories is marked by a flag. Miss Alcott having served 
some time as an army nurse. Among the graves here 
is that of John Bridge Pratt who, if our guide be 
correct, was 
one of "Jo's 
boys." Not 
far away is 
buried Eliza- 
beth Palmer 
Peabody, the 
founder of the 
kindergarten 
in America. 

Returning 
to the wagon- 
ette after our 
ramble among 
the mounds, 
we are carried 
I:) a c k once 
again to the Common and shown an obelisk to the sol- 
diers of the Civil War, at whose dedication, the guide 
asserts, three generations of Emersons made remarks. 
A son of the philosopher. Dr. Edward lOmerson, still 
lives in Concord village. We pass beneath a great elm 
on the Common, marking the spot where the whipping 




LOUISA M. ALCOTT'S GRAVE, CONCORD 



90 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



post once stood, and come again to a cemetery here, 
simply, however, to read the curious epitaph of the 
slave John Jack, a native of Africa, who died in 
1773, aged sixty j^ears. 

''God wills us free; man wills us slaves; 
I will as God wills; God's will be done," 
the inscription opens, and then continues: — 

" 'Though he lived in a land of liberty, he lived a 
slave ; ('though born in a land of slaver}', he was born 
free), 'till by his honest, 'though stolen labors, he 
acquired the source of freedom." 

Passing into the Caml)ridge Pike, we are shown a 

row of old two- 
story frame 
buildings, all 
of which were 
standing dur- 
ing the Rev- 
olution, one 
of them now 
occupied by 
a local anti- 
quarian so- 
ciety; and are 
then taken to 
Emerson's 
now modern 
home, a 
white frame 
house, shaded in the front by two horse-chestnut 
trees, which were planted by the poet the year his 
daughter Ellen (who now resides in the house) was 


















EMERSON'S GRAVE, CONCORD 



CENTRAL NEW KXOI.AXI) 



91 



l)orn, and wliich still contains his study as ho left it. 
Behind lOniorson's place the corn fields stretch off to 
Margaret Fuller's school, l)ut we j)refer to ride on to 
the famous 
S c h o o 1 o f 
Philosophy, a 
narrow barn- 
like f r a n\ e 
bnildinji; dark- 
ened l)y age, 
with which 
the Alcott 
name is so 
closely asso- 
ciated. Ad- 
joining it is 
the deserted 
Alcott home, 
a yellow frame 
building 
among larches and cedars set out by Hawthorne, and 
with the '' Wayside" home of the author of the 
"Scarlet Letter," for neighbor. The ''Wayside" es- 
specially interests us for its tower, which used to be 
reached b}^ means of a trap-door, upon which Haw- 
thorne would set his chair while he wrote, to prevent 
the intrusion of visitors. We recall Miss Alcott's 
accounts of the extremes to which ''lion hunters "drove 
both herself and family, and so we can scarcely 
blame Mr. Haw^thorne for securing his "coign of van- 
tage." The "Wayside "was standing in Revolution- 
ary days, but it has suffered many changes, among 




THE ELM TREE PEST 



92 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

the last being a great piazza added by its present 
incumbent, Margaret Sidney, the author of the "Five 
Little Peppers, and How They Grew." It was in a 
barn, a stone's throw from here, that the little theatri- 
cals described by Miss Alcott were held. 

Continuing up this interesting road, we pass the 
home of Mr. Bull, a small white-washed frame house, 
and see, at one side, a square trellis, on which still 
twines an original stock of the ''Concord" grape which 
he produced. Beyond some asparagus fields we reach 
Merriam's Corner, where the British were attacked 
by the men of Concord while retreating from Old 
North Bridge; it is still a typical country cross-road; 
Merriam's house is. beyond. 

Returning for a third time to the heart of Concord, 
we decide that time permits our going out to Walden 
Pond, the home of Thoreau at the time of his hermit 
existence. 

WALDEN, HOME OF THE HERMIT THOREAU 

On our ride out of Concord we catch a glimpse of 
the pretty little pubhc hbrary, a gift to the town (as 
are so many of the New England libraries), also of 
the homes of Senator Hoar and of Jane Austin, and 
the last residence of the Alcotts in Concord ; this latter 
now occupied by Mr. Frederick Pratt, a nephew of 
Louisa Alcott. Here, too, Thoreau lived, plying the 
trade of lead pencil maker, up to the time of his re- 
moval to Walden to live the life of a hermit. Beside 
the river, whence one may see the Old South Bridge 
over the Sudbury, Frank Sandman (to whose ''Life of 
Thoreau" we refer when reading the naturalist's 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



93 



works in the school room) hves, close to the former 
home of C'hanning, the divine. 

We now take to the country; past old farms inter- 
spersed with handsome country places and golf links, 
we wind into and up through a dense old forest that 
recalls the wilds of Michigan and Wisconsin, up hill 
and down, without sign of human life or an}' thing 
more animate than birds and squirrels, imtil we reach 
a higher crest 
and overlook 
little Lake 
Walden, nest- 
ling in these 
deep pine and 
maple forests. 
Even to-day 
there are no 
more pei ma- 
nent settlers 
on the shores 
of Walden 
Pond than 
a p i c - n i c 
party, and 
as we steal 
along the trail we come upon a pair of lovers, blushing 
deeply at being discovered enacting the "same old 
story," where they thought no soul would come. Almost 
on the shore of the lake in the wilderness stands a huge 
cairn of rocks, marking the site of Thoreau's cabin, and 
to this, as to some of the monuments in the Mammoth 
Cave of Kentucky, each visitor adds a rock. Huckle- 




SITE OF THOREAU'S CABIN, WALDEN 



94 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

berries grow all about and delightful little trails wind 
into the forest, making us loath to leave. 

A JAUNT TO LOWELL, THE TOWN OF MILLS AND LOOMS 

On this trip of ours northward across the ''small" of 
eastern Massachusetts we have now seen every place of 
really great interest as far as the city of Lowell. We 
cannot miss an excursion to this city of mills and looms, 
and so return to Boston and prepare for the jaunt. 

The ride is a comparatively short one by railway and 
the country not exceptionally interesting — vast tomato 
patches, hay fields, with tangled underbrush between, 
separate the towns from one another. Although Lowell 
is a city of over ten thousand people, we find that the 
only approach to a guide book to the town is a 
pamphlet of views, and this we take as our cicerone. 

From our first moment in the place, however, we are 
not to be deceived, and realize that the tremendous cot- 
ton and woolen mills form the centers of interest. Every 
inch of the town, however remote, veritably reverber- 
ates with the whirring of spindles and the turning of 
wheels. Many of these mills are five or even six stories 
in height, and, not content with that, they stretch over 
three or four blocks of the city. Down near the depot 
there is a great patent medicine factory whose plant 
interests us for its magnitude. We pass down a street 
of cheap stores catering to the mill people, and enter a 
restaurant advertising a ''New England Dinner." While 
good, the fare is rather plain, a single great platter of 
soup-meat, beets, boiled carrots, squash and mashed 
potatoes, from which we each, in turn, help ourselves, 
and to which is added a cup of coffee for each person. 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 95 

We turn into another street, with a handsome church, 
and an old boulder house called "Ben Butler's home," 
and pass other squares frequented l)y Lucy Larcom 
man}' years ago, to the largest of the woolen mills, a 
huge institution; for several blocks we pass window 
after window through which girls are seen, tending and 
re-filling spindles on the looms. We ask to be shown 
through the place and then we find we haxe made a 
grievous blunder. Almost without exception the real 
controllers of the Lowell mills reside in Boston and have 
their offices there, and the plants themselves are put in 
charge of superintendents, known as "Factors." In every 
mill there are certain closely patented appliances 
which are secrets of the industry, but which an expert 
from a rival plant could readily detect and copy, and it 
would be well-nigh impossible for the competitor to 
become aware of the fact. Consequently, they are very 
wary of allowing strangers to go through the mills 
without orders from the heads of the firm. It is almost 
wuth env}', therefore, that we watch the two thousand 
three hundred odd employes file into a single mill at the 
end of the dinner-hour, while we must remain outside. 
After all, however, most of us have been through smaller 
mills, and would here find what to our la}- e}'es would 
seem the same things, simph^ multiplied manv hundred 
fold. 

Although Lowell is a typical factory town, it has its 
asphalt streets, its Common and, of course, its soldiers' 
monument. There is a plain little Cit}' Hall, and then 
we come to another of the gigantic industries of the 
city, the carpet manufactories. These, however, are 
likewise closed to us, and like the fox and the grapes. 



96 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

after looking long through the windows at the bobbins, 
passing back and forth among the tight-drawn cords of 
the loom, working in the gay-colorecl threads, we feel 
that, after all, it is again onh' what we have seen so often 
at home, but on a greatly magnified scale. 

On our return to Boston we may have a twenty-seven 
mile ride by trolley, one of the prettiest trolley rides in 
Massachusetts — threading dense forests of pine and 
birch, oak and maple, with here and there a meadow or 
farm between the various villages. At Tewskbury, a 
delightful little hamlet, we catch sight of the State Poor- 
house, and at Woburn, another typical New England 
town, with its tall well-poles and gardens, the cars pass 
in sight of the birth-place of Count Rumford. Our 
companions on this long ride are two little count r}- girls, 
probably twelve and fifteen }'ears of age, and they are 
not yet used to riding by trolley. The motion makes 
them ill and, as we stop on a switch, they get out to rest. 
The longer they rest the worse they feel, and l^efore they 
are quite aware the car has started off without them. 
We are in the heart of a lonely wilderness and cars here 
are half an hour apart, so that as soon as the fact is 
discovered we stop and wait while they run about an 
eighth of a mile to catch up. It gives us an example of 
the much mooted courtesy of New England con- 
ductors. 

At Woburn Center we see an inn standing where one 
has stood since 1631, and where three tall churches face 
on the same square. Then the ride becomes metropolitan, 
carrying us to the great depot at the end of Boston's 
elevated railway system, where the overhead cars await 
to start for ''all points." 



CEXTKAL NKW KNiiLAXH 



97 



SOUTHWARD TO WELLESLP^Y COLLEGE 

We will continue our Little Journey in a southerly 
direction, making an excursion to Wellesley College. In 
order to save time we will go l)y rail to Natick, a typical 
Massachusetts town, with the Httle general stores cluster- 
ing about a common, where there is the invariable 
soldiers' monument, surroinided by four cannon and 
shaded by an elm planted by ex-Vice President Wilson, 
a native of the 
place. From 
here we will go 
by traction 
to Wellesley 
village itself, 
in order to 
see a l)it of 
New England 
t u r n - p i k e , 
with the alder 
a n d 1 e n u m 
and wild roses, 
the oak and 
sumach thick- 
e t s , and, 
incidently to 
catch sight of Waban Lake, where the college boat races 
are held. 

A neat little lodge, of colored boulders, marks the 
entrance to the college grounds, and from it a lane leads, 
up hill and down, through the forests and across the 
lawns into the wood, in sight of the Charles and out at 
a little stone ol)servatory, equipped for universit}' pur- 




BUILDINGS AT WELI.KSLIA' 



98 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

poses. Close beside is a neat black and white Swiss 
cottage, where the girls present their Shaksperian 
plays, while further up the knoll, among the trees, stands 
the main college building — a four- story brick structure 
with a porte-cochere in the center, and long porches on 
which the maids, in "Dolly Varden" aprons, now lounge 
during the vacation days. We have come at a bad sea- 
son of the year to see the college, for the "girls" are all 
away and the Ijuildings are undergoing renovation, so 
that we see little more interesting than long lines of 
bed spreads airing in the sun. 

If we circle about the center flower-bed and between 
the five great pillars supporting the balcony at either 
side, and enter the main corridor of Wellesley we shall see 
great wings stretching off on each side, with doors leading 
into two small reception rooms near the stairs, which 
alone are visible. Along these halls plain, old-fashioned 
doors give entrance to the usual college apartments — 
offices, class rooms, telephone room and dormitories, 
the latter with 3'oung ladies' cards tacked to the doors. 
We may peep into the library; tables occupy the 
center and book cases line the walls on which are several 
good pictures. There are also rooms of the Christian 
Association, and on the upper floor, which has a view 
of the wooded Charles, are more sleeping rooms, each 
with its bed and bureau , the last named of the good old 
sort with mirror and two side drawers ; a marble-topped 
wash-stand, and electric lights Ever^^w^here are pro- 
grams of class work, and under the rotunda, on the 
second floor, we notice a bulletin board with advertise- 
ments that give us a thrill of college spirit — advertise- 
ments of pictures of the Tree Day exercises for sale ; of 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 99 

the stampinjj; of })ill()ws wilh \\\v college crest, to be em- 
broidered by the young women, and the like. 

Emerging and taking another lane between the Art 
Building and another brick buikling of colonial aspect, 
the road winds into the oak forest, past smaller houses, 
which we suppose to be residences of the faculty, we go 
down hill to the cars. 

On our wa}' back to Boston we glance at the cata- 
logue of the college which has been presented to us by 
a friendly janitor. The academic year, we see, com- 
prises thirty-five weeks, extending from the first Wednes- 
day after the fourteenth of September till June. Botany, 
ph^'sics, zoology, economics and German, mathematics, 
geology, literature and art, as well as chemistry, music, 
history, Latin, Greek, pedagogy and French and study 
of the Bil^le are a part of the courses oft'ered. In addi- 
tion, girls ma}' take up elocution, architecture or busi- 
ness methods. Wellesle}- is about thirt}' }'ears old, 
having been founded in 1875, in "order to give women 
equal educational advantages with men." Although 
Wellesley is undenominational, a Christian life and daily 
morning pra}'ers are enforced. Tuition costs just one 
hundred and seventy-five dollars a year, and with 
board this sum is raised to foin* hundred. 

Meantime we have been riding down a magnificent 
avenue of elms, with handsome places, shaded l)y the 
great old trees, their porches overhung with the wistaria 
and the trumpet vine, on each side; while along the 
fences which separate these from a})i:>le orchards set to 
utilize the vacant lots, red lilies are blossoming. Faster 
and faster goes the car as we descend from Wellesley 
Hills, with its country stores, toward Charles River Park. 

Lora 



100 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

where we cross the river at one side of an old bridge, 
whose reflection is mirrored picturesquely in the l^lack, 
swift water. At Newtonville we transfer to another of 
the innimierable traction railways for which New Eng- 
land is famous, and take in the Newtons, suburbs of 
Boston, which are quite attractive for their handsome 
gardens and homes. Here, as elsewhere in the vicinity 
of Boston, however, the lawns are marred l^y great 
umbrella-like wash-poles, that whirl round and round 
before the l^reeze, and so cause the laundry to dry 
quickly. Entering Boston itself we see innumerable 
rows of handsome homes, from which the tenants have 
gone away for the summer, and have followed the New 
England custom of completely boarding up doors and 
windows on the lower floor, and drawing the blinds on 
the upper. 

UP THE COAST FROM BOSTON 

Having now seen the more interesting portions of the 
interior of Massachusetts, northward, through Lexing- 
ton, Concord, etc., to Lowell; and southward to the 
Newtons, Wellesley and Natick, we are ready for a 
jaunt northward along the coast itself, making a little 
detour to embrace Lynn, and then continuing up on 
our rugged Atlantic frontier. 

LYNN, THE CITY OF SHOES 

We go to Lynn to see practically one thing, just as 
we did to Lowell, and that is the exterior of the great 
factories. At Lynn, however, these mammoth plants 
are almost exclusively manufactories of shoes or of the 
hundred and one little incidentals that make up a 



CENTRA!. NEW ENGLAND 



101 



modern shoe. Our ver}^ first perspective of iIk^ city 
coming in from the nuirshes and summer resort 
district lying along the Bay, is a huge factory dedi- 
cated exclus- 
ively to ex- 
t r a c t i n g 
grease from 
leather. We 
take a long 
look at it, and 
t hen step aside 
to let a horse 
and buggy 
pass, its oc- 
cupant a typi- 
cal Yankee 
organ-grinder, 
who carries 
his street 
piano about in 

this way — a most comfortal:)le mode of travel for him- 
self and instrument. Then we note a sign of a "shoe- 
rag" factory, and we wonder what that may be. We 
ask some youngsters swimming in a nearby pond, but 
they fail to enlighten us. Office buildings of brick, 
and shoe factories seem to make up the whole of 
Lynn — these and little two-story homes where dwell 
the shoe-makers of to-day. Here and there will be an 
old house of the colonial style, and we note a cemetery 
with curious iron bars, bearing circlets of iron, on 
whose tops flags or floral crosses are placed. On the 
outskirts are rather pretty homes, with porches on 




SHOE FACTOKII.S IN 1,VNN 



102 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

both second and ground floor, but with high flights of 
steps leading to the front door to which, consequently, 
there is no veranda attached. There are compara- 
tively few trees along the streets of Lynn, and it is so 
sultry here that as the car comes along, labeled "Salem," 
we cannot resist the temptation to flee and begin our 
inspection of the City of Witches. 

SALEM, THE CITY OF GAMES AND WITCHES 

We CONTINUE our way on the old Essex Road with 
its delightful count r}-^ places and with the roadside 
glens, where gipsies love to camp at this season. It is 
not long, however, before the scattered frame dwell- 
ings and the immense yellow home of the State Normal 
School appear among the elms, which here line the 
streets, informing us that our destination is reached, 
and in another moment we pass some of the larger 
places, and then the shops and the railway depot 
(with tracks in the center of the street but far below 
its level), the quaint old town-hall and the post-office; 
a store built of l^rick, in the colonial style, with a cop- 
ing of stone, the East India Bank, not a stone's throw 
from a curious old turreted gateway of stone, resem- 
bling the Gate of Elsinore, and we are in Salem. 

We had come to Salem to see the witch city, l)ut as 
we leave the car something of almost greater interest 
catches our eye, a sign-l^oard indicating the offices of 
the largest game factory in the world. From Salem, 
and it may be said from the factories of this firm, 
situated some little distance outside the city, come 
all the ping-pong, the ' 'Waterloo," the ''authors" and 
almost every other game in which we delight — not less 



CENTRAL NEW ENGL\ND 



103 



than six liuuclrccl varieties of jijiunes ))eing manufac- 
tured and sold here the year around. Of all these 
games the gentlemen in charge tell us that the most 
popular ha\'e been ping-pong, tiddly-winks and pillow- 
dex. Other games that boys and girls have been 
fondest of, in the past, were ^'battle-dore and shuttle- 
cock," the circus game (where there were little tents to 
set up), ''Boer and Briton," "Chivalry" and "Water- 
loo." Then they show us a picture book composed of 
the covers of boxes for these games, from which pic- 
tures many, if not most of them, are sold. The first 
card game for children on record, we learn, was ''Au- 
t h ors," in- 
ventedliere in 
Salem some 
seventy years 
ago — the de- 
scendants of 
the lady de- 
vising it still 
living in the 
town. The 
first croquet in 
the country, 
likewise, was 
made here; 
while from 
Salem there 
also came the 
"^lansion of Happiness," the first Ijoard game in the 
land. On this ])oard the pictures, from which the 
player moves, represent the rewards of virtue and the 




SALEM CUSTOM UuLSi; 



104 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

results of vice, with an accompaniment of quaint little 
mottoes. This game came out in 1850, and was the 
most popular amusement for children luitil about 1875, 
when parchesi came in. Then, in 1892, "Pigs in 
Clover" had the "run" and afterward everybody 
played either Halma or tiddly-winks. 

THE LAND OF HAWTHORNE 

Leaving the office of the game factory, and rounding 
the corner of an immense cotton mill, it is more than 
likely that one of the numerous school boys who act 
as guides during the summer, will espy us and volun- 
teer to show us over Salem. He leads us first to a 
cheap, yellow painted frame house, now occupied by 
a Mrs. White, which was the l)irth-place of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, the great author of Salem. A room in 
an upper corner on our left, is pointed out as the 
one where he was born; l^eyond a knife with the 
author's initials, found in the small stairs leading 
to the huge chimney, there are no mementoes 
of Hawthorne here; we pass on to Her])ert Street, 
where the Hawthorne's went to live the fourth year of 
the author's life; Mr. Hawthorne, Sr., having died 
and the mother having resolved to make use of this 
building owned by her father, which adjoins the 
birth-place of her sons in the rear. In this dwelling 
the family remained about twenty-two 3^ears, and 
with it much of the life of Hawthorne is associated. 
To-day the place is a mere three-story frame Ijuilding, 
with clothes-lines stretched across its veranda, and a 
great elm casting shadows from the corner of the yard. 
It is not verv far from here to the Custom House of 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



()5 



Salem, another two-story brick building painted ^tI- 
low ; it is almost square and has a portico surmounted 
by an eagle on the front. Visitors invariably step into 
tliis old Custom House to see the room in the lower 
corner, where Hawthorne worked while surveyor of 
the port, and where, at one of the great many arched 
windows, with the broad sills and iv}' trailing up the 
sides, his desk is preserved. His official library of 
legal works, 




glass ink- 
stand, iron 
stencil, and 
one of his re- 
cords, written 
in his fine, 
clear hand and 
signed with 
his autograph, 
dated '^\pril 
10, 1846," are 
also shown 
with his proof 
glass and a 
written copy 
ofthe^Scarlet 

Letter," containing the original signatures of the 
characters, each inserted on a separate slip where 
first mentioned. 

Before leaving this book-laden chamber we are re- 
quested to sign our names in the visitors' register, 
making use for this purpose of a queer old white china 
inkwell with a copper lid. 



.»! 



HOME OF HAWTHORNE, SALEM 



106 



A LITTLE JOXTRNEY TO 



Crossing the street to the old wharves, where the 
schooners that are still tied up jjeside the decaying 
docks recall the famous East India traffic (one of 

them boasting 
of having 
been around 
the world nine 
times), five 
large cotton 
mills appear, 
in st range 
contrast to 
these humble 
slips of the 
merchant 
men. We are 
led past the 
oldest brick 
house in 
the city and 
down into Turner Street, to the original "House of the 
Seven Ga])les;" this also is of wood (Salem seems to 
be made up of frame houses) painted yellow ; a little 
souvenir photograph store occupies one corner. All 
about the house is a neat garden ; the topmost roof 
slants among fine old treetops to the second story, 
save at one corner, where a little wing runs off, thus 
forming five, not seven gables, as Hawthorne wrote. 
They have turned the "House of Seven Gables," 
which is still a residence, to good account at Salem, 
and we must pay a quarter to go througli it . First we 
enter the large, low chamber, now tinted blue with 




HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES, SALEM 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 107 

much white paneling and with a wide old-fashioned 
grate. A tiny secret closet, where music is kept, and 
another sliallow shell-shaped cupboard utilized for 
dishes, are thrown open to us, and we are also invited 
to try the broad window seats, of which there exists 
a specimen at every window in the house. Two pianos 
and a set of green upholstered chairs furnish this 
apartment. Beyond is the dining room, with a heavy 
beam across its ceiling, an oilcloth on the floor, and 
containing the chairs and tables of the present tenants. 
Here, in their day, Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Holmes 
would often dine. Another dining room occupies the 
room where the penny-gingerl)read men were sold, and 
a well-ornamented range stands on the spot occupied 
by the shop keeper, when semi-occasionally, he re- 
turned to the children the pennies with which they 
had come to buy cake. Delft wall paper, electric lights 
and a very modern sink have also been added to the 
old cake shop. 

Dark stairs lead up into an immense bedroom with 
windows looking out on the garden, the sea, and the 
orchards; a double bed on each side, with room for a 
third ])etween, seem to invite us to repose. There are 
steps going up or down from room to room throughout 
this curious dwelling, where but three families have 
lived since the Hawthornes. In one of the two rear 
chambers, into which the room where the children 
looked out at the "hand-organ rnan," has been divided, 
we perceive a ])oy's telegraph instrument, boxing gloves 
and a small iron bed, indicating a modern young tenant. 
If we choose we may go up under the eaves, now a sort 
of lumber room, the base boards full of protruding nails 



108 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

and hand-hewn pegs marking the way into the old 
studio; old bird cages and chairs and other lumber 
are kept there now. 

From the home of Hawthorne's heroes to that of 
Judge Endicott and then past the Southern Institute 
(the great school of the city) to the first church of 
Salem, is not a great distance. The little old "First 
Church " is now painted red and has but a single room; 
originally built in 1634, it is interesting as containing 
an old desk of Hawthorne's upon which he has scratched 
his name. It is furnished with tall, stiff-backed pews 
and ancient doors and settees. 

THE WITCHES 

With a glance at small, white ''East India Hall," 
we pass on to the Charter Street Burying Ground, 
where the grandfather of Hawthorne, one of the 
''judges of the witches" lies buried. In a corner of 
this cemetery Giles and Mary Correy, two of the most 
famous "witches," are buried; small slabs of black 
slate stating that they "dyed in 1692." At Salem no 
witch was ever burned, but Giles Correy suffered the 
fearful torture of being pressed to death between two 
huge boulders. Hannah Shottuc, the first person to 
accuse another of being a witch, also lies here, with the 
date on her tombstone 1701, and the age just seventy- 
seven. Her victim, a Miss Bishop, was immediately 
hung as the result of this accusation. Elms and willows 
hang sadly over the graves, casting their shadow afike 
on the resting places of the judges and of those they 
condemned to unmerited death. Nine witches in all 
are buried at Charter Street, the other victims of the 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



109 



mania l)eing interred on their farms or on Gallows 
Hill, where they met their fate. Charter Street Ceme- 
tery is exceedingly well-kept ; we learn that a woman 
left a legacy to be spent on caring for it every day. 
Such care, however, is unnecessary, as the authorities 
have the place thoroughly gone over, every second 
morning. 

After treating our little guide to a glass of soda 
water we proceed to the court house, passing into the 
offices of registry — lined on two sides with narrow 
steel cases each fitted with handles, containing the 
records of the town. Desks fil the remaining space, 
1^ u t in the 
center of the 
room, under a 
glass, is set, 
open, the re- 
cord of the 
d e a t h sen- 
tence of a 
witch, with the 
sheriff's report 
of the execu- 
tion, and a few 
crooked l)lack 
pins, with 
wh ic h the 
witches were 
accused of 
having pricked sundry children, inserted ])y way of 
evidence. We peep into the handsome court library, 
lined with books, and also into a deserted court-room. 




WHERE THE WITCHES ARE BURIED, .SALEM 



110 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

Despite our aching limbs, we must visit the ''witch 
house, ' passing on the wa}', the dwelhng where La- 
Fayette stayed. The ''witch-house" contains a small 
drug store; its "cellar" is level with the street ; on the 
upper floor antiquities are sold. This place was Roger 
Williams' home in 1635-6; passing through the drug 
store we enter the chamber, now dark and littered with 
old cases for medicines, in which the witches were 
tried. Only an arch cut from the old chimney, seems 
by any probability, in its original state. 

Our route then leads once more past the old Custom 
House and among the stores to a building on the site 
of which, in 1692, nineteen witches were executed; 
and where, the following year, tw^enty-one more met a 
like fate. This brings us back to the curious gateway 
over the railroad which is, in a sense, the portal to the 
city. 

OLD HOME WEEK 

If WE are lucky enough to have- come to Salem 
in the latter part of July we will find the town in gala 
dress; stream^ers, flags, and bunting cover every inch 
of available space ; there will be small arches with the 
word "Welcome" erected over the principal thorough- 
fares, and on the streets boys sell souvenir tra3''s and 
silver hearts bearing the name of the town — for this 
happens to be the particular season of Old Home 
Week at Salem. Old Home Week is a distinct New 
England custom, inaugurated many years ago. Dur- 
ing these seven days, which vary in date Avith the dif- 
ferent towns, but usually occur in July or August, 
every native of the city, no matter how far away he 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



111 



m a y 1 m- e , 
makes a point 
of retiiniiug 
on a visit to 
the old folks 
and friends, 
bringing pre- 
s e n t 8 and 
keepsa kes, 
and experi- 
encing a most 
pleasant 
home-coming. 
Banquets, 
parades, 
speeches, fire- 
works and 

boat races help to enliven Old Home Week, so that the 
seven days pass all too soon for the Yankees who have 
come from afar. 




OLD HOME WEEK AT SALEM 



TO BEVERLEY FARMS 

In FOLLOWING the coast methodically from Lynn and 
its oustkirts, we should have visited Swampscott and 
then Marblehead, Ijut it is far more convenient and 
satisfactory to cut across their little cape by trolley 
and visit the Witch City instead. Likewise, tired after 
our day's sight-seeing, we find we will do best to l)oard 
another trolley and make the "inland jaunt" up along 
the coast to Beverley and (Gloucester, so that when we 
wish to reach the Fish City for sight -seeing, pure and 
simple, we may save both time and strain l)y making 



112 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

the trip by boat, without the regret of not knowing 
what the east shore itself affords. 

It is but a short ride out of the gaih' decorated 
Salem, across the fields of sweet clover, chamomile and 
mustard, and over a long bridge spanning the bay, into 
Beverley, a hamlet of cheap frame houses, famous for 
its vicinity to the "Farms" or country estates, one of 
which was owned by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Aside 
from the Home Week patriotism and the frame houses, 
there is nothing to be seen at Beverley town itself. 
The car continues through the farming country, each 
man's field divided from his neighbor's by stone fences, 
built of rocks collected from the soil, and dotted at 
intervals with quaint wind-mills built to resemble a 
wheel at the top of the tower. Farmers are at work 
gathering the sheaves, hoeing the kale or driving the 
cows homeward from the stony pastures. Here and 
there we ride through a village, or, as the New Eng- 
landers say, "center," with church and soldiers' monu- 
ment, common, and burying-ground, and elms shading 
the road where the country stores stand. And so on 
and on to Gloucester. 

We are not yet quite ready for Gloucester, and so 
return in the cool of evening as we came. 

THE GREAT DRIVE TO MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA 
AND ANNASQUAM 

Having reached our hotel, a friend at ta]:)le asks 
about the day's trip. We tell him we have about 
completed the trolley route along the shore, and he 
smiles and says he hopes we don't think we are through 
with that portion of the country. We ask him why, 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 113 

and then wo loarn that the most beautiful section of 
central New l^igland hcs just beyond, away from the 
trolley lines, and on the great coaching route to Man- 
chest er-by-t he-Sea and beyond. It wiU hardly pay us 
to make this trip alone, and so we find other guests 
who are desirous of seeing that part of the Old Bay 
State, and arrange for the excursion. 

From Boston we go l\v rail to Beverley once again. 
There we engage a landau for a long drive through the 
''coast country." Happy as we were the other day to 
happen to ])e here during Old Home AVeek, we are now 
in like degree disappointed, for at this season of the 
year every form of vehicle is pressed into service, so 
that it is long before a carriage can be found, and then 
gala day rates only obtain. As we ride out of Beverley 
we see the crowd on the Common watching the l:>icycle 
races, part of the Old Home Week festivities, then 
strike for the ocean, where a lighthouse is built on the 
point, and on into dense pine forests which, fringing 
the sea, make one of the most charming drives in the 
world. Alagnificent summer homes, such as are built 
at Elberon, New Jerse}-, lie along the road, with l)road 
lawns and shrubbery and their stone dividing walls 
fairly hidden beneath rows of blossoms. At one point 
we see some fishermen's cottages, l)ut this is only an 
incident ; again the handsome villas succeed, appear- 
ing in the forest at points where they are least expected. 
Filths lead still deeper into the wildwood to more of 
these, until it is difficult to decide just where Nature 
ends and man's domain begins. 

Pride's Crossing is a little hamlet built in among 
these fashionable summer homes, and so law-abiding 



114 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

is its community that our driver points out the town jail 
with the remark that never more than two prisoners at 
one time have been confined in the building. 

Striking the railroad, with its handsome station — in 
keeping with the surrounding homes — we learn that 
we have been riding among the Beverley Farms, the 
finest "farms" in the world, and deserving the appel- 
lation only because of the virgin forests and the 
meadows maintained all al^out them. Just before 
reaching West Beach, a village of bath-houses and 
light-houses on the shore, a curious hedge, l^uilt of 
live saplings side l)y side, attracts our attention. Not 
far away stands a little frame house, whose owner was 
given ten thousand dollars to move the house across 
the road in order that the owner of one of the "farms" 
might complete its l)oundary l)y occupying the site 
where it had stood. Slightly smaller estates then 
succeed, with old-fashioned flowers flanking the vege- 
table gardens and in the adjoining orchards we ob- 
serve each tree to be surrounded l)y a tin vessel 
containing tar, to arrest the creeping insects. 

From village to village is a very easy transition on 
this drive, and ere long we are at Manchester-by-the- 
Sea, one of the great fashionable summer resorts of 
the coast. The town itself consists of a tall white 
church on the Common, an Odd Fellows hall, some 
stores and frame buildings; but all about are the 
handsome cottages of well-to-do summer residents. 
Among these cottages run private roads leading down 
to the singing sands on the inlet, where the sand is 
exceptionally deep and purrs gently as the bather 
rubs it. We are almost envious of the dwellers in this 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



115 



restful spot, l)ut still more so of the guests at the great 
hotels at Magnolia just beyond. Magnolia is another 
summer city for the ultra-fashionable, and it seems 
quite odd to find the most stylish carriages and auto- 
mobiles of every sort whirling through what appear to 
be lanes in the forest extending from cottage to cot- 
tage. Some of these cottages are built on artificial 
bluffs right over the sea, with the verandas projecting 
so that one 
m a >• 1 o o k 
right down at 
thesurfl)reak- 
ing almost 
upon the door 
steps. All 
about, on the 
encircling 
cliffs, simimer 
hotels and 
homes are 
built, bidding 
the wear}' and 
tired stay and 
live ])ut to 
enjoy. If we 
so choose, we may indulge in a typical Magnolia Beach 
dinner in one of the great hotels on the bluff; but if 
we desire to continue our tri}) and c(n'er the route 
laid out for the "grand drive" we are told that we 
will do l)etter to dine in a simple wayside inn in the 
forest where the ceremonial reqiires much less time 
and also costs much less monev. Later on, how- 




A COTTAGE AT MAGNOLIA 



116 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

ever, we shall probably doubt the wisdom of our 
choice, for the wayside inn charges a very high price 
for what it does offer, the service is poor and the 
general appearance of things most unappetizing. 

Dismissing our carriage, we saunter down to the 
depot, tired and hungry, only to find that we have 
still half an hour to wait in the midst of the wildwood, 
without anything more entertaining to do than picking 
a few huckle-berries at the roadside. On the train, 
too, we find that New England travel is not without 
its complications, and we are reduced to taking the 
steam cars to Gloucester and then the tractions in 
order to reach Annasquam, another New England 
summer city. There, likewise, are hotels and cot- 
tages, beautiful but less pretentious than those of the 
more famous towns. 

We have had a most interesting day of it, despite 
its little mishaps, and are now quite prepared for an- 
other section of the east shore: — namely, the curious 
old fishing town of Gloucester. 

GLOUCESTER, A CITY OF FISH 

If there is one town more typical of its chief indus- 
try than any other in New England, it is Gloucester — 
the city of fish. If Dr. Foster came to Gloucester in 
a shower of rain, poor old Dr. Foster is certainly to 
be pitied, for even in dry seasons the streets of the 
city are one mass of black mud. 

From Boston we have a delightful sail to Gloucester, 
up the coast past Winthrop and Chelsea and Lynn; 
the long cape at Nahant with the light houses, Salem 
and another neck of land with its beacon; then Mag- 



rENTKAT. \EW ENGLAND 



17 



nclia and Norman's Woe, and an odd bit of mainland 
stretching into the sea and connected with the coast by a 
narrow neck of land, just within the "hook of" Cape 
Ann. Once 
past Mi not 
Light we get 
well out to sea 
and, save for 
the distant 
hotels a t 
Magnolia, only 
the faintest 
outline of the 
coast is dis- 
cernible. We 
now see the 
wisdom of our 
previous ex- 
cursion by 
the trolleys. 

Awa}' out at the end of Cape Ann we round an 
island with two light houses, and then follow the 
''finger," with great rocks covering the tip, and 
sparse meadows beyond, and at last reach the city 
itself. 

Ships and wharves, and an occasional weather-worn 
frame house with the chimney in the center of the 
sloping roof, comprise our first glimpse of Gloucester. 
A little closer in-shore ship-supply houses begin to 
appear everj^vhere, and barrels of herring and mackerel 
cover the docks, while fish-glue factories make redolent 
the air. Fishermen, in A^ellow oil-cloth suits, are 




FISH "FLAKKS. 



lL'cl:^l■^:R 



118 A LITTLE JOURNP]Y TO 

numerous, and altogether we feel we have here some- 
thing different from any other town on our trip. 

The keen air makes us hungry for sea-food, and as 
it is long past luncheon time, we ask a bystander 
where we may taste of Gloucester's wares. He directs 
us to an electric car labeled "Long Beach," and we 
board it at once. 

ON CAPE ANN 

Our ride gives us an opportunity to see Gloucester 
from "A to izzard" — the homes, on the sloping hill- 
side rising from the sea ; the modern, rather rustic stores ; 
the shops for sea supplies; the dry docks and sail 
manufactories; the little theater, and the alleys, dark 
and dingy and reeking with brine ; then the l^rief inter- 
mission of a park, and again l^lock and tackle plants 
and the cheap little homes of the fishermen. After 
these we catch a sight of the crook of Cape Ann, with 
the boats at anchor in the elbow, and at its end again 
meadows and rocks. We ride through undulating 
flats, covered densely with laurel and wild rose, the 
steeple bush and lenum, which clothe most of the New 
England shores wdiere the rocks permit, to a beach of 
beautiful white sand, with hotels built on a neighbor- 
ing bluff and cottages overlooking the cove and 
pleasure resorts of Long Beach. Here, on the tip of 
the Cape, with the sea l^reaking almost beneath the 
veranda, and with the perspective of the Cape and 
the island beyond, we get a sea-dinner that is a mem- 
ory for ever after — clam or fish chowder ;then either fried 
lobster or fried clams with potato salad, and finall}^, 
the more cosmopolitan, ice cream, cake and coffee. 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 119 

Returning leisurely to Gloucester we take up its 
sights in earnest . First of all we shall step into a great 
fish "flake," or yard, where thousands of whitefish 
are drying on open-work shelves set in long rows and 
most of them covered over with sail cloth. Kegs are scat- 
tered about between these flakes; salt litters the 
ground, and there is an odor of fish about that almost 
stifles us. An attendant, noting that we are strangers, 
explains that the codfish — which are most numerous in 
this ''yard" — -are caught off the Grand Banks. There 
they are split open and ''cured" on the vessel (which 
is well supplied with salt), for perhaps ten days. Then 
the fish are l^rought home and placed on these stands, 
or flakes, to dry, and the canvas placed over them 
so that a hot sun may not "burn" the fish too much. 
At night these hundreds of fish are taken in and piled 
up to ''sweat," and the next day brought out once 
more; the process continuing until the little bodies 
are as dry as boards, a result that requires about a 
week to obtain. In little neighboring shanties we are 
shown piles of these dried cod, and learn that a five- 
pound fish will l)e reduced in weight to less than two 
pounds through evaporation. When so prepared the 
fish luring from one dollar and eighty-five cents to 
three dollars the hundred weight, according to current 
supply. 

We pass up the wharves, piled with barrels, fish rig- 
ging, oakum, and what not, take a peep into a mast- 
maker's shop where men are busy smoothing down a 
great pole and the floor is covered with the shavings, 
and are then attracted by a store selling the oil-clothing 
of the skippers. As a souvenir of the place we may 



120 A LITTLP] JOURNEY TO 

purchase one of the almost flat fishermen's caps which 
we see so often in marine pictures. Just be^^ond, a 
rather large plant is devoted exclusively to making 
heads for the hundreds of kegs used in shipping fish 
from Gloucester. It is fish — fish — fish, on every hand, 
even to the retail shops, with their assortment of 
fishermen's supplies and with the floor covered with 
salt where the fish itself is not piled high. 

We turn down a street of grog shops, such as sail- 
ors in story books delight in, and come to preparers 
of and dealers in halil^ut, and then to a glue factory. 
The door of the latter stands ajar and so we step in 
and see the great bags of fish-offal, heads, tails 
and fins, cut off b}^ the packers of haddock and cod 
(which have the clearest skins), being thrown into a 
hopper, which feeds them into the huge "agitator" 
or vat. This tank is filled with water; the salt from 
the fish is extracted by pressing a great reel, rotating 
in the tub, tightly down upon them. For twenty-four 
hours this pressure is kept up, and in that period the 
water is drained off twelve times and a fresh supply 
admitted. When the last bath has flowed off the fish 
are conveyed to an upper floor and into a great 
''cooker," resembling a boiler placed on its side and 
then cut across; this is surrounded b}^ steam piping 
which ''cooks" the fish for perhaps three hours. The 
air is sweltering in this room and we are glad to hurry 
on to where the residue of the bodies is spread upon 
a huge sheet and the remaining liquor extracted by 
pressure of about four hundred tons. This liquor, 
after passing through the cloth, is evaporated until 
the glue alone remains. Out of fifteen hundred gal- 



CEXTKAI, NEW ENGLAND 121 

Ions of liquor yielded daily from the fish, only two 
hundred gallons of j2;lue remain at the end of the ten 
hours of evaporation. During the cooking the "froth" 
is skinnned off to make "tanner's cod liver oil," 
which is dried and pressed to resemble cakes of l)rown 
sugar and is used 1)}' tanners the world over. Some of 
this dark l)rown oil is also being poured into barrels 
close by for shipment for other purposes. Away down 
in the cellar they show us the "cremating" of the 
final residue of the glue industry' ; the l)urning up of 
this otherwise useless stuff yielding something like 
three tons of fertilizer a day. 

As a little souvenir of our visit the kindly proprietor 
presents us with half a dozen bottles of glue, and 
laden with these we proceed on our way. 

On the wharves we meet a boy a]:)Out twelve years 
of age who interests us, and in the course of our 
chat we learn that his father went off with a fishing 
schooner about two years ago and has not been 
heard of since, so that the family ]:)elieve he must 
have been drowned, as were many of his relatives. 
Just then a ship comes in from the "Georges," the 
great fishing ground, and he accompanies us down to 
where the fish are l:)eing removed from the two hatches 
with long-hooked poles. The schooner had ])een out 
forty-two days; the crew consists of two men for each 
of the eight dories or row boats al^oard, the captain 
and the cook. All are now ])ustling about in yellow 
oil-trousers, V)lue woolen shirts and tall boots, and 
seem heartily glad to l)e back. They have some 
splendid fish stories, and had we time we would gladly 
listen to their account of the part they took in the 



12'J A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

doings of the great fleet which leaves Gloucester every 
spring for the southern waters, and markets the catch 
at Philadelphia, New York, and, what remains unsold, 
in Boston and finally Gloucester. Great rivalry exists 
among the boats as to which shall first land and 
market its catch, and so the ships go out as early in 
the season as possible. When we make our Little 
Journey to the Southern States, we shall pay a visit to 
these fishing-grounds off the Capes of Carolina. 

As far back as 1883, we are told, over four and a 
half million dollars' worth of fish and fish products 
went out of Gloucester, and the trade has since grown 
Ijy leaps and bounds. 

THE QUEER LITTLE ISLES OF SHOALS 

To THE north of Gloucester the Massachusetts coast 
offers us little more of particular interest and so we 
resolve on an excursion to the Isles of Shoals, a curious 
archipelago of tiny bits of stone lying off the south- 
eastern corner of New Hampshire. We have long 
heard of the Isles of Shoals through Celia Thaxter's 
poems, many of which appeared in school readers. 
The sail takes us ever farther and farther away from 
the shore^ and as w^e get out of sight of land (save for 
a dim line of blue on the horizon) we learn that it is 
not so ver}' long since tourists began to come here 
and that there *s little to l)e done but fish. Occasionally 
an out-lying island or a sail attracts the eye, otherwise 
there is only the glassy blue green sea and the sky, 
and we are reminded of our Little Journeys over the 
Atlantic. Here, as ever at sea, one finds good com- 
pany.; we learn that land lovers usually go to the 



CENTRAL \K\V KXCLAXl) 



123 



Shoals by wa>' of Portsmouth, \ow Hampshire, seven 
hours l)y trolloy from Boston. 

About half i)ast one the Isles actually aj)pear on the 
horizon, far out in the open sea. At first there seem 
l)ut two of them, but Httle by little others appear 
until nine are visible. The islands are probably the 
strangest any of us have ever \isited. They consist 
almost wholly of slabs of white rock filled with spark- 
ling mica, on which the sun breaks and scintillates 
until, on a hot Juh' day, these bits of land are the 
most brilliant over which the Stars and Stripes wave. 
Xow and then a sparse meadow or a few fishermen's 
homes are 
seen on the 
islands, but 
otherwise 
they are de- 
serted, except 
the larger one 
on which a 
hotel and 
cottages have 
been built — 
with pleasant 
lanes leading 
from these, 
between broad 
popp3^ beds, 
to the wharf. 
The sea about the islands is filled with porpoises; far 
off to the westward the pale blue hills of the mainland 
are visible, reminding us very much of the approach to 




ON TUV: ISI.ICS OF SHOALS. N. 11. 



124 A tJttle journey to 

the Azores. As we get nearer in we discover a little stone 
church with quaint red-painted tower, behind the hotel, 
and also see a ferry l)oat plying from isle to isle, making 
its trips as occasion demands. 

While we stop at Deer Island the band plays and 
the summer guests come down both to welcome us 
and meet the mail, so that the scene is a gay one, 
and we are almost persuaded to stay and spend the 
rest of our vacation-time here — in what has the ap- 
pearance of mid-ocean. We partake of a good dinner 
and then saunter over the isle, its surface one mass of 
broad, contorted, glistening rocks running steeply down 
into tiny canons, or forming palisades from the sea ; while 
higher up, inland, lichen and in the coves, red clover 
takes root. In our excursion we come up on the site of 
Ft. Star, built here in 1653, occupied by the Provincial 
Government in the French and Indian Wars. It 
was repaired in 1745 and was destroyed in the 
Revolution. Not a stone's throw from this is the old 
parsonage of the island, a frame dwelling dating from 
1732, now deserted and the one wall caving in. Down 
at the wildest end of the island, in among the rocks 
and l)rackish pools covered with sea weed, there is a 
little grassy vale where, enclosed by a simple fence, 
lie the members of the Thaxter family. The walk 
over the rocks becomes difficult here, reminding us of 
the shores of the Ohio archipelago, and as we make 
our way to Miss Underhill's chair, where the lady fell 
into the sea and was drowned, we do not wonder at 
the accident. Over on another island we see Miss 
Thaxter's home, but we do not care to run the risk of 
missing our steamer by being rowed over to it. 



CENTRAL NEW ENCiLANI) 125 

PORTLAND AM) A PEEP AT MAINE 

Being now so far north we cannot resist a trip to 
Portland, and then a short excursion into the White 
Mountains. Massachusetts and the neighboring coast 
offers so much that we must reserve more northern 
and Western New Enghmd for another Little Journey; 
})ut to return home without having seen the famous 
White Mountains would l)e like going to New York 
and not crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, or visiting San 
Francisco and omitting Chinatown, and so we make 
arrangements for the trip. We might, if we would, 
return by the tri-weekly boat to Portsmouth and there 
take another steamer for Portland, but we find that 
by returning as we came, to Boston, we will connect 
with an evening Portland boat, have a restful night's 
sleep on the great coast liner and wake up ver}' early 
in the morning at our destination. Evenings are 
especially enjoyable on the steamer ; the stars twinkling 
brightly, now and then a l)ell or whistling buoy singing its 
song while rocked b}' the waves, and here and there the 
flash of a light-house, or the passing lights and music 
of some ])oat. We reach Portland at four in the 
morning, long before any street cars are running, and 
as we have nothing better to do we begin our sight- 
seeing at once. At the ''center" of the town stands 
the Soldiers Monument — a handsome statue set on a 
great pedestal and surrounded by electric lights. 
Stores stretch along this, the main thoroughfare, to 
the Longfellow home, a three-stoiy brick house set 
among trees and with many windows on each floor. 
The building is now a small museum of mementoes of 



126 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



the poet; but, of course, at this unearthly hour it is 
still closed. We pass on into a district of tall old 
residences, some of them reminding us of mediaeval 

castles ; then 
catch glimpses 
of the City 
Hall, of a 
massive Safe- 
t}' Deposit 
building and 
of a number 
of pretty 
churches. We 
already re- 
alize, how- 
ever, that so 
far as actual 
sight- seeing 
goes there is 
little or none 
to be done here. Down on the shores of Casco Bay 
we notice some large grain elevators, and then con- 
tinue our ramble to the old Eastern Cemetery, where 
Commodore Preble is buried. A few squares beyond 
stands a quaint old lighthouse, now far inland, re- 
sembling the body of a Dutch wind-mill. Above, the 
Eastern Promenade, the favorite walk of the Port- 
landers, extends parallel with the Bay, with its three 
hundred and sixty-five islands. It is flanked by a 
park, on whose benches we stop to rest and enjoy the 
view extending to the densely built homes of Cape 
Elizabeth. 





^^^^ 


i 



OLD LIGHT-HOUSE AT PORTLAND 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



127 



Turnino; a])oul we reacli 



Longfellow's 



birth-place ; 



a tall frame house three stories high, with a tablet on 
the side recording its history. Farther up the street 
is the birth-place of another noted man, Thomas B. 
Reed, the satesman; this is a low two-story double 
cottage, now almost deserted; there are some fine 
elms in front and a wagon-shop in the garden. A car 
comes along 
about this 
time and we 
board it for 
a ride out 
through the 
other end of 
the town — the 
Western Prom- 
en a d e . ^^ e 
pass a statue 
of Longfellow 
on the way, 
but othenvise 
there is again 
little of in- 
terest; in fact, 

we are almost glad when the time arrives 
to take the train for the White IVIountains. 




BIKTHIM.ACK OF L( )N(iFELLO\V, roKTLAM). MAINE 



for us 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Of course we take the observation car, for some of 
the finest scenery in the White ^lountains is along 
this route. Through a truck farm country with com 
and cabbage and potato fields we are carried, past a 



128 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

pretty little pool and among hills which keep growing 
higher and more densely wooded with each passing 
mile. Occasional waterfalls, driving mill-wheels on 
the outskirts of the villages, or log-jams piled in the 
creeks, vary the scenery on these outskirts of the 
White Mountain range, where summer lasts longer, 
probably, than in any other place in this latitude. 
Far over the meadows the long blue ranges stretch, 
and we ourselves experience a growing sensation that 
we are rising ever higher and higher above the sea. 
Then we enter such a wilderness as Cooper describes 
in his Indian tales, with hidden lakes in the forests, 
at one of which little tugs await to convey the sum- 
mer guest to the other shores of Sebago. Skirting 
in and out along the shore and re-entering the 
wilds it seems to grow chilly, owing l)oth to the 
altitude and the perpetual shade of the pines, oaks 
and l)irches. Where there are villages at all they are 
built of curious shingles, freshly cut from the trees. 

Deceived ])y the name, we had imagined the White 
Mountains snow-capped the year around, or at least 
composed of a rock appearing white at a distance ; but 
we learn that the appellation was given by the dis- 
coverers, who saw them before the forest had taken on 
its full foliage, and hence the misnomer. 

Ever deeper and deeper grow the pine forests, until 
even the golden rod no longer brightens their edges. 
The villages are farther and farther apart, where the 
full-ljearded Yankee farmers gather at the station 
discussing crops, while waiting for the train to "pull 
in;" more rare grow the camp meeting grounds which 
we pass at intervals on the route. On our left rises 



CENTRAL WAV ENGLAND 



129 



a magnificent chain of green mountains, with cascades 
flowing down to forest pools; the scenery reminding us 
at once of that along the Green-l)rier in the Allcglianies. 
We note that on the right there is one mountain much 
higher than the rest, with smaller ones in every direc- 
tion, and wluMi we stop at Fryeburg, an old-fashioned 
stage coach takes tlie passengers for the })eak and 
whirls them off into these foot-hills. Especiall}' beau- 
tiful are the shadows cast ])y taller mountains on their 
neighl)ors, against the emerald green of the woods, 
with the occasional variation of a bold rock-face or a 
field of blos- 
soming buck- 
wheat. While 
we are follow- 
the Saco 
a 
family of 
mountaineers 
who travel 
with us pass 
drinking 
water al)out 
in a huge old- 
fashioned tea 
kettle, and, 
like the pea- 
s a n t s o f 
Bosnia, we met on our Balkan Little Journey, every 
member of the party drinks directly from the spout. 
Passing the great granite quarries and nearing 
North Conway, the White Horse and Cathedral 



mg 

R i \' e r 



'^ '■ 


f 

mm - 




It*' 


' 


ifc • "• ifii^^' 


m 




>^*^ 





A MOUNTAIN STAGE 



130 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

Ranges, of which we have heard so much in our geog- 
raphies, loom in sight, an occasional log cabin standing 
out in the foreground of the picture. Within sight of 
Mt. Kearsarge we stop at a village with a church and, 
as it is Sunday, find the neighborhood filled with 
clumsy Iniggies in which the farmers have come from 
miles around to meetin' — the genesis of the real "town 
spirit" of New England. More and more mountains 
of note come into sight. Away up near the top of 
Kearsarge we see a little shelter house built for those 
who make the ascent to the top; then Mt. Thor comes 
into view with a double-headed peak behind, and 
after that a mountain which the farmers call ^'Kasa- 
homo," and state that it is "king, after old Washing- 
ton." Natives on the cars are very proud of the 
mountains ; they make a point of discovering strangers, 
and now come over and point out each peak. Unlike 
the Bostonian, who is rather cold toward the stranger 
until he has been introduced ])y some mutual friend, 
these mountaineers are the soul of hospitality. At 
Glen Station, where the mountains loegin to pierce 
the clouds, they indicate Iron Mountain to us, and 
when we stop for ten minutes at Bartlett for refresh- 
ments, they advise us to try a New Hampshire apple 
dumpling, which the station restaurant provides. 

We are now in the heart of the White Mountains 
and hear all sorts of tales of the rigor of their winters; 
how, at times, the snows bury the localit}^ so deep 
that the trains must tunnel through the drifts, and 
other similar stories. Looking at the pretty "wood- 
land post-cards" of the locality, sold us on the train, 
and then out into the smiling valleys, it seems hard 



CENTRA]. \E\\ ENGLAND 



31 



to believe this. Seated in the observation car, witli 
its set of chairs phiced in two rows along the right of 
the aisle, the cinders become extremel}' annoying, and 
this often just when the most attractive views are to 
be seen. A train boy comes through witli great gog- 
gles fitted with screens, something like automobile 
spectacles, for sale, and, as he charges a quarter for a 
pair, we are al- 
most inclined 
to suspect 
the engineer 
of l)eing in 
league with 
him and mak- 
ing cinders fly 
to cause de- 
mand for his 
wares. Be- 
yond Sawyer's 
River we get 
more panora- 
ma s that 
enchant, and 
then see the 
ruins of the first hotel in the mountains, used in 
staging days, and now a mere Inass of luml)er. 

^leanwhile we are climbing a nine-mile grade, wliich 
rises at the rate of a hundred and sixteen feet per 
mile to the highest point on the route — Crawfords — 
nineteen hundred feet, we are told, above the sea. 
All the magnificent President al Range spreads out 
before us as far even as Mt. M'Kinley (or Mt. Pleasant, 




PKK.SIDENTIAI, KANUE, WHITE MOUNTAINS 



132 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

as it was called until about three years ago), forty-seven 
hundred and sixty-four feet high, and huge old Mt. 
Washington, the monster of the range, with its spur, 
a great giant mountain in itself, at one side, and the 
main peak playing hide-and-seek among the white 
clouds ; while the almost vertical cog-wheel that draws 
us up its slope recalls the cog up Mt. Vesuvius. 

We now glide over the Frankenstein Trestle, five 
hundred feet long by eighty high, spanning one of the 
deep canons of the mountains, and round into the 
valley of Crawford Notch, a long valley leading off to 
another mountain hotel standing almost in the path 
of the avalanches, l:)uilt on the very edge of the moun- 
tain side, so that directly below a foaming cascade 
threatens; and we catch a glimpse of the ])arren rocks 
that form the famous Elephant Head. Hotels of 
which we have heard for years rise from the valley, 
with the mountains behind, and at one of these, tourists 
who intend making the ascent of Mt. Washington 
leave us, drawing their overcoats al^out them as they 
get out into the nipping July air. 

At Fabyan's, the great center for mountain travel, 
two hundred and eight miles from Boston, we, too, 
dismount. We are in a Inroad valley, encompassed on 
every side by wooded peaks, and with Mt. Washington, 
six thousand two hundred and ninety-three feet in 
height, just across from the station. A little poppy- 
lined lane leads to a tennis court and a deer park filled 
with its red deer from the mountains, and then on to the 
famous hotel, which is one of the institutions of New 
Hampshire. Like all mountaineers, our host of the 
flowing whiskers knows how to charge, and if we par- 



CENTRAL NKW FAT; LAND 



133 



'^S, 



take of his hospitality, as wo must or ^o (Unnerless, 
it will cost us exactly three dollars eacli. The hotel 
at Fabyan's, however, is a sight in itself, and recalls 
a certain Carpathian hotel to those of us who made 
the .1 uslro- 
H u n <ja r inn 
Little, Journey. 
In the center 
of the great 
open corridor 
is the desk of 
the manager, 
with steps 
rising up on 
each side, 
a n d a t the 
foot of these 
are souvenir 
stands where 
I n d i a n 
basket-work, 

moccasins, etc., are sold. The walls here are agree- 
ably tinted and further decorated with guns, rifles, 
mounted deer heads, and other trophies of the chase. 
In one corner a stuffed deer stands, and rugs made of 
skins of various White Mountain forest animals are 
numerous. Dozens of rocking chairs invite to rest, 
and as the guests mingle, jesting and chatting, we feel 
that we have an opportunity to see tourist life in the 
mountains at its best. To the rear of the office be- 
tween a ladies' parlor and a smoking-room, is the restaur- 
ant, and there, at noon, the proprietor and his wife 




A WHITE MOUNTAIN VALLEY 



134 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

stand on each side of the door to welcome returning 
guests, as well as new ones, and direct the army of 
attendants. The bustle and life are all so different 
from any hotel we have visited in New England as to 
make us quite willing to take our place at one of the little 
white covered tables, over which smilax droops from 
the ceiling, and indulge in mine host's fare. 

Charming drives and mountain ascents invite us on 
every side, but these we must abandon for the present, 
for we have reached the utmost l^ounds of the terri- 
tory we have mapped out for this Little Journey. It 
is the one great draw]:)ack to a New England trip that 
no matter how far one goes, there are always a dozen 
equall}' interesting places just a few hours or a few 
miles away — until one "just must stop" somewhere. 

We return by evening train to Portland and thence 
by boat to Boston. All of the north coast of Massa- 
chusetts and a bit beyond the Old Bay State, we feel, 
has been thoroughh' visited. It is with a certain 
relish that we open our guide book at the map and 
check off our route so far. Then, alas, we notice that 
in a sheltered bay, quite near the city itself, we have 
omitted two points — Marblehead and Swampscott. 

MARBLEHEAD AND THE REGATTA 

As traveler's luck will often have it, the oversight 
has turned to our advantage, for we are now just in 
season to see the city of Marblehead in regatta time, 
when the yachts of the New York Club and other asso- 
ciations throng the waters, excursion boats come from 
afar to attend the spectacle, skiffs fill the bay within 
the neck, and Marblehead is at her best. 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



135 



From Marblehead town, which is not particularly 
attractive, ])eing composed of dull little frame houses 
whose greatest claim to fame is that among them was 
once the home of the notorious Gerry, after whom the 
form of manipulating election districts so as to ])ring in 
a desired candidate known as "gerrymandering," was 
named. We take a ferry across the water to JMarble- 
head Neck, the fashionable summer resort. Every- 
where, to-day, 
these waters 
are dotted 
w i t h the 
graceful white 
3^achts dec- 
orated with 
long lines of 
flags and pen- 
nants l)ound 
to ropes, from 
mast to mast 
and down to 
stern and bow. 
Most of these 
l)oats have 
come here 
from Provincetown or other points to take part 
in the contests for the much-prized cups. In the 
evening there is an illumination of boats, as well 
as of the shore, and then little tugs will take us 
in and out among these floating palaces, so that 
we are decidedly glad we postponed our visit until 
now. 




REGATTA TIME AT MARBLEHEAD 



136 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

SWAMPSCOTT, ON THE PURITAN ROAD 

On our return to "The Hub" we stop off at Swamp- 
scott, another summer resort whose greatest interest 
for us is the fact that it Ues along the old Puritan 
Road, the original highway between New England 
and Virginia, the oldest road in the United States 
and the one over which John Winthrop plodded in 
1630, when he set out to find a home for his colony. 
Over this pike in 1770 likewise traveled the first mail 
coach in the British Empire, making the trip fourteen 
years before the like stages plied on the highways of 
old England. On the Puritan Road, too, originated 
the light runabout known as the ''sulky" wdiich, the 
story goes, derived its name from a young girl's 
remark that any man who'd ride in it, i. e., alone 
(as he must) — must be decidedly sulky. 

To-day the Puritan Road is fringed with magnifi- 
cent summer hotels, set among New England elms, 
on the broad piazzas of which the guests congregate. 
From the hotels and the cottages the road leads along 
the boulder-strewn shore to little inlets, where the 
sand lies deep, and we may join the young folks from 
the cottages at play with Old Ocean. 

By way of relaxation, w^e will return through Salem 
Willows, so named from a great row of these trees from 
which, tradition says, the Salem witches were hung, 
and l:)eneath whose limbs, to-day, little witches of 
worsted, their brooms l^eneath their arms, are hawked 
by itinerant peddlers. To-day, too, a carrousel and 
chutes, and other devices for popular amusement, 
bring to Salem Willows gaiety and merriment through- 



CEXTRAT. XEW FACT, AND 137 

out the summer, surpassed only in A-ariety at Nantasket 
and Revere Beach. 

IIEVKRE BEACH 

Revere is still closer to our cottage home than Salem 
Willows, and whenever we return from an excursion 
betimes we may take the little narrow-gauge trolley 
thither. Revere is the C'oney Island of Boston and 
the beach is constantly crowded with bathers, as. well 
as mere lovers of the sea. There is a state bath-house 
here and we may take a dip in the jjrine, in suits 
owned b}' the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, while 
towels also belonging to the state await us in the 
dressing rooms. Then we can saunter among booths and 
bazaars where candy and popcorn, souvenir cards 
and photographs are sold, and fortune-tellers and other 
itinerant players that go to make up a great amusement 
city I)}' the sea, also abound. But for the lack 
of a ))oard-walk along the shore, and the greater num- 
ber of places selling soft drinks, we could readily 
imagine ourselves ])ack at Asbury Park or Atlantic 
City. One thing, however, we find here that has quite 
a pleasant taste after the somewhat chilly sea bath, 
and that is a vairety of sea-weed sold in the booths, 
and eaten especially by the children. Birch Ijeer, too, 
tasting something like the familiar "root beer," we 
notice to be quite popular with the young folks. 

Of course while at Revere we must "loop the loop," 
one of the most dangerous attractions probably, 
that has yet been devised for resorts of this kind. 
We take our place in a little two-seated car and are 
carried down a decline, then up a huge loop of steel. 



138 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



i' ' 


■^jt^-SfSM. 


1 

• 





.-nHHR^&UXM 




and around and down and out, at such terrific speed 
that it is all we can do to hold on tight; we feel the 
strain of the straps at that one particular instant 
when, high above the ground, our heads are exactly 
where our feet should be, and vice versa. At that 

instant we 
feel a certain 
dizzy shot in 
the 1) r a i n , 
but otherwise 
do not mind 
the experi- 
ence. 

Coming out, 
we enter a 
huge spider- 
wel) of wire, 
it is a mys- 
tic maze, and 
we have a 
merry time 
seeking our 
way out of "t We can also mount life-size wooden 
horses, arranged as a steeple chase, and race with one 
another up and down great slopes fitted with con- 
cealed rails, over which the horses are carried. Then 
we try the moving stairs, the loose rope-ladders, the 
concave mirrors, and the dark cave with the skeleton, 
on approaching which we are given a slight and 
wholly unexpected electric shock. After treating 
ourselves to a plate of ice cream we slide down 
long wooden slides, erected for the benefit of the poor- 




A DIP IN THE BRINE AT REVERE BEACH 



CEXTKAL XKAV KXCLAXI) 1 o9 

est visitor, and are taken to *'The Zoo." As we 
emerge we encounter iron l)ars; the laughter of the 
crowd l)elow \w\\)s to enhghten us — we have walked 
deliberately into an empty cage labeled ^^wild 
animals." There are swings and see-saws, and boats 
that carry us through dark caverns, interspersed with 
brilliantly lighted rooms, where the boat-men sing, 
and so on to an Oriental palace in the center. We 
can spend much time and many nickels and dimes at 
Revere. Before we go we must take a turn on the 
merry-go-round, which here not only goes round and 
round, but whose horses prance up and down like a 
galloping mare, during the journey. On our way to 
the wild animal show we see a notice, "one lost child 
found, inquire at police station" and we wonder 
that more little folks are not lost in this delightful 
pleasure garden. 

CHARLESTOWN AND THE NAVY YARD 

After our long north-easterly journey to Portland, 
and days devoted only to pleasure at jMarblehead 
and Revere, we are ready for some more strenuous 
sight -seeing, something of the sort that makes even 
the most stolid tourist and glol^e-trotter admit that 
sight-seeing, right ".y pursued, is "hard work." We 
want to finish with all that is interesting to the north 
of Boston, and so start in the direction of the Polar 
star, intending to "do" Chariest own. On our way, 
we may make a detour to catch a glimpse of Jamaica 
Plains, another residential district of Boston, where 
we may see children's play-grounds having httle 
gardens in which 3'oung nature lovers may plant flowers 



140 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



if they wish, and come daily tend to them. CircHng 
'round, we go through a busy part of the city, where it 
seems as if men alone throng the streets, and at a 

corner, our 
attention is 
draw^i to a 
drug store, 
up and down 
whose wall a 
huge insect is 
kept climb- 
ing; it is the 
rather ingeni- 
ous advertise- 
ment of an 
insecticide. 
Crossing the 
Charles we are 
in Charles- 
town, a city 
allied to Boston, much as Brooklyn is to New York 
City. 




DRY DOCKS AT NAVY YARD, CHARLESTOWN 



BUNKER HILL 

We do not ride very far through Charlestown be- 
fore we tire of the tenement district we seem to have 
entered, a section broken only by the cheap restau- 
rants, with their signs of "licensed victualler" in the 
windows. We leave the car and walk down a shady 
avenue to a great, grass-covered mound, surroimded 
on all four sides by homes and trees, and supporting 
a little frame souvenir store, a replica of which, in 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 141 

stone, is still in process of erection. Above and be- 
tween these two, towers the great landmark of Boston, 
Bunker Hill ^Monument, the speeches at whose dedi- 
cation and completion will furnish us with food for 
study when we get into the high school. The monu- 
ment itself is of a l)luish stone, rising from the center 
of the mound, which also ])ears inscril^ed tablets set 
to mark the British and American redoubts of June 
17, 1775, and a handsome statue of Gen. Prescott. 

We pass through the souvenir store, then through 
a little passage, and into the monimient itself. We 
find a hollow central column occupying the interior, 
and old, worn, stone steps encircling this to the top. 
At the foot of the flight, behind a grating,there stands 
a copy of the original monument on Bunker Hill. Of 
course we wish to make the ascent of the monument, 
and so up and up and up we wind, with only an occa- 
sional window or aperture into the dark shaft, or still 
rarer electric light to guide us. Emerging at the top 
we find ourselves in an empty conical chamber with 
braces at the windows for telescopes which are not 
here. Aside from two old cannon in the wall there is 
nothing to be seen but the view, and that we enjo}', 
tracing, so far as we are able, all our past pilgrimages ; 
house tops, decorated with wash lines, and surrounded 
by little railings to prevent the maid falling over the 
edge, somewhat obstruct the picture. On one hand is 
the Navy Yard, with the ships in the harbor and the 
great stone rope-walk, thirteen hundred and fifty feet in 
length (the longest rope-walk in the world), the timber 
sheds and two ship houses, and the great chimney and 
shops and foundries; then our eye meets the Mystic 



142 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



and East Boston ; the great iron works and the ocean 
wharves; Fort Warren, the hght houses, and Castle 
Island, commanding the channel where it is so narrow 
that two ships cannot pass abreast. 

We should feel ashamed of ourselves did we not 
know the story of the Imttle of Bunker Hill, how the 
British on that memorable 17th of July, 1775, came 
up with a force of four thousand soldiers, and were 
assisted, in addition, by seven warships, and a battery 
on Copp's Hill, and how they went away with eleven 
hundred wounded or dead, while the Americans lost but 

four hundred 
and fifty. As 
to the history 
of the ^lonu- 
ment, how- 
ever, we are 
not c^uite so 
sure of our- 
s e H' e s, and 
so glance 
through the 
pages of the 
little guide 
book to Nevv' 
England 
which we car- 
ry, and learn 
that the association for the erection of the memorial was 
organized in 1824, and that the corner stone was laid 
by La Fayette the following year, — the fiftieth anni- 
versarv of the battle — when Daniel Webster made his 




BUNKI.i; 1111. 1. .Mtt.N I Ail..\ I, t iiAlU.EriTOWN 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 143 

great address. The foundation of Bunker Hill Monu- 
ment consists of six courses of stone, laid twelve feet 
below the earth's surface; eighty-four more courses 
standing above ground complete the edifice. At the 
base the monument is thirty feet square, while at the 
top, two hundred and twenty-one feet above, it is but 
fifteen. All in all there are two hundred and ninety- 
four steps to be climbed, and we read these figures in 
the little room and then begin the descent, which we 
find a good deal more tiring than the upward climb, 
owing largely to our already aching muscles, and we 
are quite willing to believe the number has not been 
exaggerated. 

THE NAVY YARD 

From the monument we make our way to the 
United States Navy Yard, and spend a pleasant hour 
or two looking over the various buildings, and entering 
those to which the public is admitted. The docks 
with the war-ships tied up for repairs or repainting 
have a great fascination, all^eit we may not board the 
men-of-war. 

While we stand here watching the unloading 
of hemp for the rope-walk, we hear a boy tell 
another that he has made up his mind to run away 
from home and become a sailor, and we can scarcely 
blame him. In another part of the huge Yard, which 
contains ninety-one acres, we see the men forging the 
huge links of chain that hold the ships' anchors, and then 
step into the rope-walk, down whose long aisles the 
hemp travels; it is first fed to teeth that comb it and 
force it through a little aperture, where it is spread 



144 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



into one flat belt; then it travels through other tiny 
holes, at each of which it is twisted with other strands 
of the same size, until it emerges at the other end, a 

thick and 
tough rope, 
and is rolled 
into balls for 
shipment. 
Everywhere 
there are 
buildings and 
cannon and 
marines in 
blue, while 
down at one 
end of the 
Yard, in the 
mess hall, wc 
meet sailors in 

A MAN-OF-WAR AT CHARLESTOWN UattV white 

uniforms, fresh from some long cruise on the war ships. 

THE OLD CONSTITUTION 

The LEAST patriotic among us will want to visit the 
old warship. Constitution, l^uilt in 1777 by contribu- 
tions of patriotic Bostonians, which took part in the 
wars of 1803 and 1812. It bears the proud record of 
having taken one hundred ships and of never having 
been once defeated. The "Constitution," in its 
day, sailed nineteen miles an hour, bearing an arma- 
ment of fifty-six guns, and a crew of four hundred and 
fifty men. Today "Old Ironsides" is the oldest Amer- 




CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



145 



icaii ship afloat, lying at anchor in the Navy Yard, 

robbed of its masts, and resembling a school-ship. 

Visitors are encouraged to come aboard, especially the 

school children. Uncle Sam preserves the vessel as 

a means of inculcating patriotism. Inside there is 

one great cabin, painted white, and gay with flags, 

hung from the ribs of tlie boat itself. In tlie center 

of the cabin a mast rises up through the floor, while 

beyond the old steering gear is in position. Well 

forward is a smaller cabin with a leather couch along 

the fore-wall; 

in this cabin 

was signed 

the treaty 

with Tripoli in 

1803, the only 

American 

treaty ever 

concluded on 

a vessel-of - 

w a r . Cheap 

chromos and 

crayons of 

naval heroes, 

a desk and 

a few chairs 

now furnish 

the apartment. 

the prow, little 




"OLD CONSTITUTION." CHART.ESTOWN 



Still farther forward, directly over 
rooms on each side are shown, in 
which the prisoners used to be confined. AVe are then 
taken to the lower deck, which is one apartment with 
a low-ceiling, where the apparatus for hoisting the 



146 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

anchors, the old ovens, and the great chains that once 
held the ship in place, are preserved. 

Returning to land and following a roadway across 
the lawns to the officers' homes and the barracks, 
we see the huge dry-docks, with the steps going deep 
down, as into quarries ; then passing a row of old can- 
non under the trees, we take a little rope ferry, operated 
by white-clad sailors who turn a gigantic wheel, to 
the U. S. Training-ship, where a band has been play- 
ing all the morning. We are ushered again into one 
great cabin, the walls lined with chairs and the cabin 
filled with officers and marines in blue or white, and 
visitors. Many of the sailors who show the guests 
about are much tatooed. Most of them seem rather 
idle too, so we believe an old veteran who tells us that 
these fellows have comparatively little to do, until 
they are actually put aboard the warships. Below 
we see the kitchen where the meals are prepared, and 
are further led to believe that Jackie has a pretty 
good time of it on the training-ship. 

Separated from the school-ship by a war vessel 
and a torpedo boat, the latter in port for some unknown 
reason, or a transport undergoing re-plating, is a 
prison ship, the deck filled with prisoners wearing 
white uniforms who have l)een sentenced here for 
terms of from two to six weeks, for insubordination, 
desertion, or other crimes. As about the only possible 
work these men can do on the ship is to see that the 
vessel is kept spick and span, their greatest punish- 
ment, an orderly tells us, is the fact that they receive 
no pay during their term of imprisonment ; their fare 
is also not as good as when they are at liberty. The 



CENTRAL NEW EXtJLANI) 147 

ship, he adds, patrols the coast, keeping the men 
aboard until their terms are over. 

Boston children are very fond of the Navy Yard 
because of the constantly shifting exhil)ition of war- 
ships and such vessels which may be seen, for it 
is safe to sa}' that pretty nearly everj^ vessel in the 
Atlantic squadron, if not in the entire navy, drops 
in for a visit in the course of a year. 

ANOTHER PLAY-GROUND OF BOSTON 

This evening we have the choice between going to 
the theater or seeing the other play-ground of 
Boston, Nantasket, and as we must begin a southerly 
descent of the coast at this time, and the evening is 
warm, we prefer the excursion. 

Nantasket disputes with Revere the title of the 
Coney of Boston. Our journey is to be by boat, and 
as it looks like rain we take our luncheon in a restau- 
rant in the heart of Boston which makes a practice of 
loaning its patrons umbrellas on their depositing a 
dollar, charging a very slight fee for the rental on their 
return. We are thus prepared for all weathers. 

The shore at Nantasket we find lined with hotels — 
now of the cheaper sort — Ijut at one time forming 
one of the fashionable summer cities for which this 
New England coast is famous. The l)each is a de- 
lightfully sand}^ one, and as there is a state ])ath house 
here, many of the poorer people of the city come out 
for a day in the surf. Restaurants, cheap souvenir 
and candy stands, etc., line a street which is parallel 
with the sea, and there are carrousels and roller-coast- 
ers galore. Phaetons, too, are numerous, to take travel- 



148 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

ers for a drive on the Jerusalem Road, where the 
prettier cottages are situated, and we may either in- 
dulge in a drive, or, if we wish to spare our purse, take 
an electric car in the same direction. It is ever the 
same story, however, cottages and hotels with latticed 
piazzas, and gardens and lawns that end at the sea, 
so that we really find nothing new for our note books, 
and, we confess, we are secretly glad of it, for these 
sight-seeing days give us a weary task every evening 
in faithfully compiling our diaries. 

PLYMOUTH AND PURITAN LAND 

This lull in note taking, however, seems to be the 
proverbial quiet Ijefore the storm, for our next ex- 
cursion, true to our plan now to take in the coast to 
the south, is to be thirty-seven miles by boat, almost 
to the l^ay enclosed ])y the great hook of Cape Cod, 
and thus into beautiful old Plymouth, where the ''Cor- 
ner Stone of the Nation" was laid. This point will 
conclude our jaunt along the Massachusetts Coast, 
save for the one town of New Bedford, through which 
we must pass on our way from some of the more famous 
islands of the Bay State. 

The journey to Plymouth is one of the most charming 
of the many we have made. We go by sea; our 
course lies just far enough from land to make us give 
up all attempt at sight-seeing, and we content our- 
selves with glancing through some book of the Pil- 
grims, or possibly reading over the ''Courtship of 
Miles Standish," delighted with such interruptions as 
a school of flying-fish, which draws the passengers to 
the rail, and before we know it, we are at the little 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



149 



town, of whicli wo have heard and read so many 
tales. 

Down on the quay, l)eneath a handsome stone 
canopy, with an iron raihng between its pillars, is 
the famous 
"Cornerstone 
of the X a- 
tion," Plym- 
outh Rock. 
We are glad 
to find that 
we may walk 
inside the rail- 
ing, and, if we 
wish, even sit 
u p on the 
"rock," which 
is a reddish 
l)oulder on 
which is cut 
the d a t e 
"1620;" it was cemented together where it was 
broken at the time of its attempted removal in 1774. 
From behind the "Rock" the sod embankment of old 
Cole's Hill slopes up to the street itself, where immer- 
ous carriages await to convey strangers over the town. 

We are in a rather leisurely mood, and therefore 
prefer to do our sight -seeing on foot. We saunter 
through a deliglit fully shaded street, of neat, square, 
frame houses, each with a door upon a portico in the 
center in front ; we catch only a glimpse of the Russel 
Library, a low building of ]:)rick, harmonizing with 




PLYMOUTH KOCK 



150 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



the quiet tone of the place, and note an old coat-of- 
arms hanging from a house door where the tractions 
for Brocton turn. Then we come to the Old Colony 
Club and the Courthouse, the latter a wide, gray stone 
structure, with white cappings l^earing the usual 
coat-of-arms. Before it stretches a lawn with a foun- 
tain, and across the way is a neat memorial church. 
We are interested in a mural tablet on the outside of 

t h e c o u r t- 
house, repre- 
senting four 
kneeling In- 
dians, each 
h o 1 d i n g a 
firming heart 
in Lis hand, 
and l)eside 
each a tree, 
indicative of 
the you n g 
'' plantation " 
(as the colo- 
n i s t s w ere 
sometimes 
called). We 
step into the office of the Registrar of Deeds and are 
shown the old records of Plymouth Colony, the will of 
Miles Standish, and the original patent granted by the 
Earl of Warwick to the colony in 1620, with cjueer seal 
and case. There are Indian deeds too, the general 
tenor of which is decidedly quaint. 

Emerging from the courthouse, with the jail and 




LANDING AT PLYMOUTH 



CFA'TRAl. \i;W KXCLAXD 



151 



sheriff's home at \\w roar, we draw one full hi'c^ath of 
salt sea air, and tiien cross into Pilgrim Hall, built 
of rough blocks of rock on three sides, with a front 
of smoother sandstone. The Hall is in the form of 
an old (}i'(h4v 
temple, with 
Toric columns 
a n d porch, 
but on the 
pediment a 
bas-relief of 
the landing 
of the Pilgrims 
at Plymouth 
indicates its 
more modern 
date. Crossing 
the vestibule 
we pay our 
c^uarter ad- 
mission fee, 

register and tread the old plank floor of Pilgrim 
Hall. Doors lead off to right and left, while just 
ahead is the museum, and thither we direct our steps. 
It is lighted by panes of glass set in the roof ; all around 
the walls are handsome pictures of the Pilgrim colony ; 
cases ranged below contain other articles of interest. 
The parchment commission from Oliver Cromw^ell, 
Lord Protector of the Commonw^ealth, appointing 
Governor Winslow to act as arbitrator between Great 
Britain and Holland, is the first of these to meet our 
eye, a curious contemporary picture of Cromw^ell is set 



H^EB^^^H^' ' I 






■k-^HM r _-. » .,» rmjm 1 \ . 


WS»r,rj:=:^===^'^ 



PILGRIM HALL, PLYMOUTH 



152 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

in one corner, possibly that the Dutch might identify 
him on its presentation. The original autograph to 
this paper, however, has l)een torn off by some un- 
principled visitor in the days when admission was free 
to the hall; a fac -simile replaces it. On the east side 
of the hall is the famous oil painting of the Landing, 
by Sargent, thirteen l^y sixteen feet in size, valued 
at about three thousand dollars. 

But we have only time for a hasty revi w of the 
many interesting pictures, reproductions of the most 
of which we have seen in our histories at school or 
at home. We want to see the chairs of Elder Erewster, 
and of Governor Carver, l^rought over in the May- 
flower, and, most of all, the clumsy cradle, like a rock- 
ing horse, of Peregrine White, the first white child 
born in the colony. Strange companion for this sym- 
bol of peace is the sword of Miles Standish, with the 
Arabic inscriptions o which Longfellow makes the 
Captain speak so often. John Alden's Bible and a 
deed witnessed by him in 1653 are near, also a letter 
rom King Philip. Down in the l^asement we are 
shown a small museum of non-Puritan relics, but these 
do not interest us greatly, so we return for a last look 
at the Pilgrim mementoes, some of IMiss Standish 's 
embroider}^, an old pew, a spinning-wheel, gourd ves- 
sels, plates and candlesticks of silver, some old chests 
with covers of imitation mother-of-pearl, and models 
of the Mayflower that are in the third centur}^ of their 

age. 

cole's hill 

Stepping out of Pilgrim Hall we look down Cole's 
Hill, on which, the severe winter following the ''Land- 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



53 



ing," the Pilgrims buried half their niimber, leveling 
the graves and planting corn, "that the Indians might 
not learn of their losses." But why do more than 
enumerate these names and places? We would l)e 
ashamed, one and iiW of us, American glo])e trotters, 
did we not know the story of Plymouth, at least in 
the daj's of Miles Standish! Some of us have read a 
little juvenile series, entitled "Jolly Good Times," 
by a Mrs. Smith, and we will have a secondary interest 
in Plymouth, because of the visit to the place by the 
little heroine. 

We descend the hill where a batter}' stood in 1742, 
and pass the 
sites of later 
forts, com- 
manding the 
present rest- 
ing place of 
the ^'rock," 
then by ter- 
race and stairs 
reach the sea, 
and turn to- 
ward Leyden 
Street, anoth- 
er thorough- 
fare hallowed 
with mem- 
ories. Almost 
at the outset we pass the home of Gen. John A\'inslow, 
and of James Warren, President of the Provincial 
Congress, a yellow frame house erected in 1730. There 




BURIAL HILL. PLYMOUTH 



154 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

is a sunny square, also a number of almost metro- 
politan stores here, which seem strangely out of place. 
Leyden Street, itself, where the Pilgrims had their 
homes, is now lined with residences, and an up-to- 
date sidewalk leads beneath the elms from house to 
house. We follow it to the Town Square, where stands 
a pretty Unitarian Church (the prevailing faith in 
New England), with the gray Church of the Pilgrimage 
beside; near by is a little stone spring, still in use, 
from which the Pilgrims drew their water. An old 
frame house of the seventeenth century served as 
Old Colony Government House until 1742, when the 
original l)uilding was destroyed to be replaced l^y the 
courthouse, the Town Hall. The Church of the 
Pilgrimage, the guide l^ook adds, stands on the spot 
where the Pilgrims erected their first church in 1638,— 
they had worshiped in the fort until that time. 
Facing the square today is the Church of the First 
Parish, its congregation that of the original church 
of the Pilgrims. 

THE MOST CURIOUS GRAVEYARD IN THE WORLD 

We WOULD hardly go to a graveyard for amusement, 
ordinarily, but everyone we meet tells us not to omit 
Burial Hill, the old cemetery l)ehind the church, 
where Gov. Bradford, the two Cushmans and others 
of the Plymouth Company are Inu'ied. Here, too, 
stood the old fort of the colon}', and from the hill we 
may overlook the town and harbor, and even descry 
the Standish ^Monument at Duxbury, and Watson's 
Hill, the resort of the Indians where the treat}^ with 
Massasoit, giving the Pilgrims assurance of safety, 



cicxTRAL ^■^:^^■ kxcilaxd 



OD 



was signed. For many years the colonists were too 
poor to import tombstones, and the first they did 
import were of a very inferior qiiahty of slate, so that 
many of the oldest, dating about 1681, iiave been pre- 
served only by protecting them with metal copings, 
even then the 
inscript ions 
are well nigh 
undecipher- 
able. Today 
the graveyard 
is officially 
closed for 
burial, save to 
families and 
connections of 
those already 
interred there. 
The old epi- 
taphs are the 
object of 
our special 
interest, and we employ a guide who is rambling about 
the cemetery, endeavoring to secure patronage. 

First he shows us an old stone with an arrow pointing 
to two men's graves and an epitaph stating that "she 
was a widow twice," the other stones evidently mark- 
ing the resting place of "her husbands." Another 
stone, not far awa>', reads "Heaven only knows what 
a man he might have made, but we know he was a 
very rare boy when here." 

As we take out our note book to jot down some of 




FOREFATIIEU'S MONUMENT, PLYMOUTH 



156 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

these inscriptions we learn, on inquiry, that Miles 
Standish is not buried here ])ut on his old farm at 
Duxbur}', about eight miles from Plymouth, and that 
a descendant of his still lives in Plymouth and keeps a 
curio shop. John Alden's graye, which was probably 
also on his farm, has not, we are informed, l^een 
discoyered. 

First we copy the epitaph of a man who l^roke his 
engagement with a young woman of Plymouth, for 
which act he was cursed by the witch, Miss Crowe, 
with the result that when he next put to sea the entire 
crew of the yessel were drowned. 

Here are some other examples : — 

"Remember me, as you pass by; 
As you are now, so once -was I. 
As I am now, so yon will be. 
Therefore prepare to follow me!" 
"Death is a debt to Nature due, 
Which I have paid and so must you." 
"Strangers and friends, while you gaze on my urn, 
Remember, death will call you in your turn. 
Therefore prepare to meet your God on high, 
When he rides glorious through the upper sky." 

And this, the inscription to Tabitha Plasket, the cele- 
brated mistress of a "dame school" of Plymouth, at 
which institution youthful culprits were suspended by 
skeins of yarn passed under the arms : — 

"Adieu, vain world, I've seen enough of thee", 
And I am careless what thou sayest of me. 
Thy smiles I wish not, 
Nor thy frowns I fear; 
I am now at rest — my head lies quiet here." 

And lastly, to a child dying at the tender age of 
one month : — 

"He glanced into our world to see 
A sample of our miserie." 



CENTRAL XKW ENGLAND 



157 



There are others equally as good or better, but we 
have not the time to copy more, for Plymouth still 
holds many attractions, and the guide advises us to 
drive out to Billington Sea, a little pool surrounded l)y 
summer cottages where we may see the "summer 
hfe" of the locality. Having seen quite a number of 
these resorts and finding them much alike, we prefer 
to take the sunny road up to the heights to the Na- 
tional Forefathers' ^lonument, of magnificent granite, 
enclosing a series of panels under glass which cost, we 
are told, twenty thousand dollars. From the birds- 
eye view of woods and meadows, sea and islands, we 
turn to the 
inspection of 
the stone it- 
self, crowned 
by a figure of 
''Faith," 
forty-feet in 
height, the 
largest stone 
figure in the 
world. Small 
figures are 
placed a])out 
the pedestal 
of this statue, 
representing 
the several 
modern graces 

— Morality, Law, Education ^ — but more interest- 
ing than these are the alto-reliefs beneath the 




A lAr.i.KT OF FOREFATHEirS MONUMENT, 
PLYMOUTH 



158 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



glass, representing the departure from Delft, the 
signing of the compact, the landing at Plymouth, and 
the treaty with the Indians ; place is reserved for a 
list of the passengers on tlie "^ia^'flower." From the 
spot we can overlook the forests of Plymouth, which, 

though a town 
of l3ut eight or 
nine thousand 
inhabitants, is 
eighteen miles 
long l)y from 
four to nine 
wide, and, 
like some of 
the towns 
we met on our 
Hung a rian 
Little. Journey, 
owns forty 
t h o u s a n d 
acres of wood- 
land. These 
extensive limits are due to the rights conferred by old 
charters. Leisurely descending the hill, we hear the 
whistle of our boat warning us that the time is up, and 
so finding, by a glance at our guide book, that nothing 
more of importance remains to be seen, we are well 
content to return to old Boston. 



^;^ 




'*<s. ^ -^_ wtt^KK^Bti 


J^^^s^^ 



A SKIPPER OF NANTUCKET 



A LONG JOURNEY TO NANTUCKET, THE WHALING TOWN 

Again we take our map of New England and scan it 
carefullv. Southw^ard of Plvmouth the coast de- 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 159 

scends, then bends east and north into the sea, round- 
ing to form the famous hook of Cape Cod; ])ut from 
what we can learn there is nothing to be seen here. On 
the tip of the Cape, near Province-town, the sand has 
been blown into some rather fantastic forms, l)ut 
hardly sufficiently curious to warrant a day's excur- 
sion thither. On the eastern or outer side of the Cape 
likewise there is not much interest for the sight-seer. 
We then have Buzzard's Bay and the town of New 
Bedford, full of memories of the old whaling da}'s. 
When we get here we find we are almost at the south- 
western extremity of eastern Massachusetts. Beyond 
hes the Island of Nantucket, which we find is more 
convenient to visit first, reserving New Bedford for 
the return. 

From Boston we will start on our journey by rail. 
The ride across Massachusetts on this stretch is mo- 
notonous — meadows and dense scrul>oak tangles and 
an occasional hamlet. At Providence we set our 
watches back an hour to conform with more western 
time. Skirting Buzzard's Bay we catch a glimpse of ex- 
President Cleveland's home — a two-story frame house, 
surmounted by a tower, with a lawn extending to the 
water's edge; several neat Dutch windmills are close 
by. At Wood's Hole we leave the train, which is 
switched out on a long dock, where l^aggage lies piled 
promiscuously, and perceive in the background a hill, 
cottages, and the famous Government Fisheries Ex- 
perimental Station. A steamer is moored here and we 
go al^oard. About half past four anchor is raised and 
we are bound for Nantucket. 

Dear old Nantucket ; what associations does not its 



160 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



name recall! The town-crier and the curfew, the 
whalers and the primitive cabins, and also the dog- 
gerel about the: — 

"Old man from Nantucket, 
Who kept all his cash in a bucket, 
Till his daughter, named Nan, ran away with a man, 
And as for the bucket, Nan-tuck-et." 



MARTHA S VINEYARD 

On THE right green headlands, with lighthouses on 
the bluffs projecting into the sea, and with cottages 
and summer hotels, fringe the horizon until we get well 

out to sea, 
whenMartha's 
Vineyard, the 
other large 
island l^elong- 
i n g to the 
Massachusetts 



c o m m o n - 
wealth, is 
faintly dis- 
cernil:>le where 
the sky and 
ocean meet. 
For a long 
time only the 
dimmest out- 
lines of land 
are visible ; l^ut we skirt closer and closer in along the 
shore and finally drop anchor at Cottage City. Mar- 
tha's Vine^^ard is given over almost exclusively to 
summer tourists and seekers of rest, and we are told 




CURFEW TOWEK, NANTUCKET 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 161 

that more than half of these are school teachers, so we 
are just a bit anxious to he of^', lest oiu' own teacher 
should happen to be in the crowd on the dock and 
start cjuestioning us as to how many prol)lems we have 
done and how many rules we have learned since 
school closed in June. The captain tells us that the 
only things to be seen are hotels and ])oarding houses, 
so we remain aboard, and wdien the whistle blows and 
the great ship plows out to sea once more we have no 
regrets. The sea gets rather rough, a fog comes on 
and aside from a few fishing smacks there is nothing 
to ])e seen for about an hour, as we ride through 
Nantucket Sound. On account of the fog the whistle 
blows every third minute; our hands become sticky 
from the moisture, and the very notes of the ship's 
band, on the lower deck, are subdued ])y the density 
of the air. More and more do we pitch and toss, until 
some of our fellow-passengers become very sea-sick 
and, night setting in, retire to the berths in the saloons. 
Finally the fog lifts, the moon comes out, and ere we 
know it, it is a quarter past eight and we are safe in 
the harl^or of Nantucket. 

Down at the wharf is gathered a curious aggrega- 
tion of "runners" for the summer hotels which here, 
too, are ubiquitous. Unlike those of their kind 
in places we have visited, these men do not shout 
together, or attempt to attract our attention, l)ut stand 
in line and each, in turn, calls his ''house," until the 
end of the row is reached, when the first crier starts 
over again. Owing to the variations of the several 
voices the calls form almost a tune, and we jot down 
the several hotel names to recall them in this sequence. 



162 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

It is inky dark in Nantucket town at this hour, and 
we follow the runner to the hotel meekly and are glad 
to get to bed. The mosquitoes are troublesome here 
and so it is some t me before we get to sleep. Suddenly 
a bell tolls and we look at our watches; sure enough, 
it is nine o'clock and the curfew is tolling, telling all 
good Nantucketers to retire. 

SIGHT-SEEING ON A PRIMITIVE ISLAND 

When we start out sight-seeing the next morning 
we will find a curious combination. Nantucket is 
composed of old narrow streets, extending among neat 
white-washed frame dwellings; but in and among 
these stand old shingled houses, two stories high, the 
windows divided into many parts as they were in the 
olden time. There is a door in the center of each house- 
front, fitted with shutters like a window, with steps 
leading down from it to right and left. Then, too, the 
houses have a chimney on each side, thus constituting 
a style of architecture typically their own. Many of the 
newer houses have a central chimney, with a little porch 
bui t about it, so that the tenants may overlook the 
roof-tops to the sea. Most of these modern homes 
have a door on the left side of the lower floor, opening 
upon a porch built on the space left by indenting the 
house itself at that ponit. Along the main street, too, 
the combination of old and new prevails, the wares 
of the stores being exposed in the ancient windows, 
while the storekeeper resides on the upper floor. 

In the center of Nantucket town, a hollow square, 
faced with these mercantile establishments, is the 
Common, an elm-shaded park, with an open band- 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



iV^ 



stand in llic center, where every afternoon at four an 
orchestra plays at the city's expense. Following the 
street and pen^ping into the shop windows we notice a 
bric-a-brac dealer, whose vases and urns all take the 
form of cats and dogs. Not far away is the Center 
Street Church, dating from 1823, and seating a thou- 
sand people — the largest auditorium on the island. 
Farther up the cob])led way, in among groceries and 
souvenir 
booths, rises 
the tall white 
spire of the 
U n i t a r i a n 
Church, where 
the curfew 
bell is tolled, 
and on wliose 
dial N a n- 
tucket reads 
the time. We 
pass the Ath- 
enaeum and 
more of the 
ramshackle 
homes of the 
poorer people to the outskirts of rolling fields of yar- 
row and wild carrot and soap-flower, to the oldest 
house on the island, dated 163(). 'Hw design here is 
of the simplest, the roof sloping down on every side 
to the four walls, and the whole now l)oarded over to 
preserve it. The roadwa}' here, too, remains as it was 
probably in the days of Jethro Cofhn, the Imilder — 



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WHALER'S HOME, NANTUCKET 



164 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



deep with sand, which fills our shoes and makes walk- 
ing somewhat uncomfortable. 

Reaching the wild rolling fields of laurel and myrtle, 
that make up the interior of Nantucket Island, we 
retreat to the town square again, and the postoffice, 
where the naive notices of the citizens are hung on a 
communal Inilletin-board. The shop owners here 
claim the outer edge of the sidewalk and erect booths 
there for the display of their additional wares, so that 
the array of l)ooks, groceries, meats, and such like, 
reminds us of a European yearly fair or market. 
Again we seek the limits of the town, this time to 

\' i s i t the 
famous old 
windmill, in 
charge of an 
ex-whaler, 
which is pre- 
served in its 
p 1' i m i t i V e 
seventeenth 
century con- 
d i t i on — a 
beam descend- 
ing from the 
sailsto a slant- 
ing cart-wheel, 
which rotates 
over the 

ground, supplying the power to do the grinding when 
there is occasion. Sauntering on, we see a Colored 
People's Church, the first we recall in New England, for 




OLD FARM HOUSE, NANTUCKET 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 165 

to those of US who hail from the west and south, negroes 
seem inordinately rare in this part of the country and 
their houses of worship still rarer. Of course Nantucket, 
like all New England towns, has its Soldiers' and Sail- 
ors' Monument, a rather plain shaft, which we notice 
on our way to the town jail — two stories high, shingled 
over, with barred windows. Next to it is a one-story 
cottage, labeled "House of Correction," and we wonder 
wliether either of these weak little structures ever has 
any tenants. 

Our walk has given us quite an appetite and when 
we hear the breakfast bells sounding from a dozen 
verandas we return to our hotel. While indulging in 
the fresh mackerel and the equally fresh plums, we 
learn of another curious phase of summer life in Massa- 
chusetts. The larger part of the waiters and wait- 
resses in these hotels are students, earning their way 
through college or school. At our own hostelry, for 
example, the clerk is studying medicine and the head- 
waitress is a trained nurse. They suggest that we 
make a side excursion, by sea, during the morning, 
and so we ramble to the wharves, passing an old ship 
stripped of its masts, where a baker now has his home, 
to the slip where, in goodly numbers, the sail boats 
ride at anchor. 

A SAIL TO WAUWINNET 

In company with eighteen or nineteen other visitors 
we board one of the smaller of these boats for a sail, 
l)efore the wind, to the Island of Wauwinnet. Tliis 
gives us an opportunity to see the elegant hotels built 
on the capes of Nantucket, the yachts in the harbor, 



166 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

the picturesque perspective of the town and, finally, 
the deserted cottages for which the owners being unable 
to find tenants, have been abandoned to wind and 
weather. Following a stretch of reef, our sail is bent 
far over, and the man at the wheel is put to it to keep 
in the long narrow channel just off an island where the 
plovers hop about protesting against our intrusion. 
Out in the blue sea again, we stop a moment beside a 
fishing smack, and a grizzled old disciple of Isaak 
Walton, who has been aboard, drops nimbi}' off and 
into his own dory. We anchor at Wauwinnet; the 
fact that its nearest neighbor to the ''east" is Spain 
is to us the most interesting item connected with 
the island, unless we include the good fish dinners to 
be had here. The island itself is covered with deep 
sand, in which laurel, lenum and thin grass struggle 
for existence. People come here principally for the 
magnificent surf-bathing which the farther shore 
affords. There is a life-saving station here, too, and 
we may be lucky enough to find the men at drill ; after 
witnessing which we will ramble 'long shore, inspecting 
the sand forts the children have been building, or 
gathering the handsome, flat, blue-brown shells, with 
which the beach abounds. If we are a trifle mischiev- 
ous we will return to the boat ahead of the rest and 
blow the skipper's old tin horn, bringing companions 
back long before their time. 

A spanking breeze carries us back to Xantucket, 
where the Athenaeum is now open for inspection. 
Curios of the whaling days and mementoes of the 
Penobscot Indians seem to occupy the greater part of 
its walls, although there are endless cases of shells over 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 167 

which wc may hnger. Lately, the attendant says, the 
whales are again numerous, not having been hunted 
for many j^ears, owing to the great number of cheaper 
oils that have been substituted for their products, so 
that several ships are again fitting out for whaling at 
New Bedford, manned by sailors from Nantucket. 
Just as we are admiring a wonderful vase in the 
museum, composed of the wings of South African 
butterflies, we hear a curious cry in the street. 

"Oh, yes! oh, yes! Now there's been"a fearful flood out West. Missis- 
sippi River all under water! — Big murder in Chicago! — Awful news in the 
papers today! Does any lady or gent want to buy watermelons? Vessel 
at Strait Wharf. Worth ten cents this week. 

"There's been a r-r-rippin' big fire in St. Louis! MiUions gone up. 
Big surf at Wauwinnet. Steamer Cross Katy will leave at 2 P. M. Now 

here's a sample of 's soap. No, ma'rm, you can't have but one. 

Good bye, mum." 

We listen in astonishment. Such a picturesque 
drawl — interrupted again and again by the ringing of 
the hand bell — we have never heard before; we are 
informed that it is Billy Clarke, the Nantucket town- 
crier, the last of the old army of town-criers in the 
country. We must go out and see Billy, a curious old 
fellow, ''just a little bit loose in the upper regions," 
as the Nantucketers put it, who goes about singing 
the news of the place at a fixed stipend from the town 
council for crying the civic notices, but more largely 
living on fees paid by merchants for ''calling" their 
latest advertisement. Of course we want a snap-shot 
of Billy, and bring our kodak into play. But Billy, 
like President Jackson, is averse to photography, and 
so resents the act. In fact, he ducks into the nearest 
house, remaining hidden until he thinks us gone, or 



168 



A littlp: joi^rxey to 



passing out of a rear door, and avoiding us l:>y side 
avenues, heads us off. If we go in pursuit, Billy will 
lead us a weary chase, so that the most we can hope 
to obtain is a photo of the back which he turns upon 
us, or the one picture that has been taken of Billy 
and is offered for sale in the town. 

Our chase to procure a picture of the town-crier 
leads us to the station of a Httle train consisting of a 

single freight 
and passenger 
car, the latter 
open and with 
seats that 
have l^ecome 
rather shal)by 
— tl:e whole 
l)ound, over- 
1 a n d , f o r 
Siasconset, 
or, as every- 
one here pro- 
n o u n c e s , 
'Sconset. We, 
too, would go 
to 'Sconset. 

So at one o'clock we begin our ride out of Nan- 
tucket at a place bearing the rather curious sign 
''water for ships." Of course it is drinking water that 
is sold, but strikes one as odd till one thinks about it. 
We pass the custom house, with its tall metal tower, 
and then proceed along the State road, across the 
peculiar prairie which covers the interior of Nantucket. 




TOWN CRIER, NANTUCKET 



CENTRAL XKW KXCLAND 



109 



Most of this land is as yet unclaimed — think of it, so 
close to civilization! — and given over to the laurel, the 
lenum and the wild carrot, with a plentiful sprinkling 
of scarlet 
lihes. Owing 
to the difli- 
culty of keep- 
ing watch on 
the cattle 
a ni () n g the 
scrub, the 
land is not 
even used for 
grazing, and 
so nothing 
meets our eye 
but an luidu- 
lating carpet 
of green, with 
an occasional 
darker area marking a prairie fire of recent date. 

At 'Sconset we find ourselves in an old fishing town; 
the cottages set at ever}' angle toward the road save 
the proper one — some of the houses, in fact, deli])er- 
ately turn their backs on the street. 

Between the old homes, modern cottages have been 
built, but preserving the color and style of their prede- 
cessors even to the extent of ornamenting their gables 
with figure-heads from former vessels, so that it is 
often impossible to distinguish the new from the old. 
Most of the houses are mere cottages of thatch and 
shingling, built with a wing at each end, so that the 




A BIT OF SIASCONSET 



170 A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 

whole forms three sides of a square. Over each door 
is painted the particular cottage's fanciful name, and 
this, with the deep sandy road and the rustic gardens, 
adds to the attractiveness of the whole. In fact we 
are reminded greatly of our visit to the Island of 
Marken, on our Little Jouriiey to Holland throughout 
this jaunt, for here, too, the wheels of our buggy 
sink three and four inches into the sand as we ride 
through the heart of the town. There is a town pump, 
probably replacing the Common ; but more interesting 
is the station for the Wireless Telegraph Service, from 
l)ehind which there rises a huge staff a hundred and 
sixty-five feet high, with a metal knob on the top, 
from which pass the messages for the Nantucket 
Light Ship, far out at sea, which we passed on our 
other Little Journey, or to such passing vessels as are 
equipped for the service. 

We return to Nantucket City in season for a blue- 
fish supper, and, in the evening, the adventures of a 
hotel keeper of the town afford us entertainment ; he 
had rounded Cape Horn in the good old days, and had 
so lost count of time that he only learned, by hearing 
the church l^ells on one side of the Cape, that it was 
Saturday instead of Sunday. Again the curfew calls 
to bed in primitive Nantucket, and we retire at its 
bidding. 

Leaving Nantucket in the morning by the vessel on 
which we came, we arrange to remain aboard after 
reaching Wood's Hole station, in order that we may 
pass through the famous channel. We expect to see 
a rather deep and gloomy fiord, such as we met at 
Cattaro, and so, after long hours out of sight of land 



CENTRAL NEW KXGLAXD 171 

and of coasting the shores of Martha's Vineyard, we 
become keenly anxious for the little station where we 
first went aboard. A httle after ten this stop is made, 
and we pass between two long, low islands, almost 
level with the sea, and so close that there seems just 
)"oom for us. We would imagine ourselves in a river 
but for the dim headlands of the coast beyond; but 
there is really nothing so remarkable about the place, 
and it is with disappointment that we finally learn 
that we have gone through the Hole and entered 
Buzzard's Bay. A short sail across this waterway and 
we are in the harbor of New Bedford. 

NEW BEDFORD, THE TOWN OF THE WHALERS 

New Bedford disputes with Nantucket the right to 
the title of the whaling town, par excellence, in the 
country, and even as we drop anchor we find in a 
neighboring slip two old whale boats, with three masts, 
great black painted sails and innumerable quantities 
of rigging. An old whaler standing by, who had 
broken one leg and become paralyzed on one side from 
exposure aboard the boats, tells us of the w^ork. 

In whaling, he says, there is usually a crew of tliirt}' 
or thirty-five men in addition to the ship keeper — 
who has charge of the vessel when the men are out in 
the dories. Trips will require from two to three years, 
as whales of the sperm variet}' are not plentiful in the 
western Arctic waters, and so whalers must needs 
double the Horn and sail up to Bering Straits to 
catch them. The produce is then carried to San 
Francisco for sale, and the ship again returns to the 
fishing grounds in season for more, repeating this 



172 



A LITTLE .TOI'RXEY TO 



until the whales have changed their schooling-place. 
Then the last cargo is l)rought directly home to New 
Bedford. 

We are interested in his account and ask how the 
whales are taken. When a fish is sighted, he says, 

the men fol- 
low right ])e- 
hind in a six- 
oared dory 
a n d w hen 
close enough 
in they 
harpoon and 
then kill it, 
either with 
lances or so- 
called ' ' bum- 
guns." If the 
school is large 
a flag will ])e 
t h rust into 
the carcass to 
mark its position, while more whales are sought ; and 
then, after the slaughter is completed, the great 
vessel comes up, and the ^'oil case" or sac in the top 
of the head, which is filled with the clearest spermaceti 
(often as much as fifty l)arrels) is removed and poured 
directly into barrels on the deck. The teeth, which 
are manufactured into imitation ivory, are then ex- 
tracted, and after that the whale's head is thrust 
overboard. A liook is then inserted into the great fin, 
and l:)y loosening the skin beneath, the latter is drawn 





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MAIN STREET, NEW BEDFORD 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 



173 



off and the blubl)er obtained. This skin, then, will l^e 
cut into pieces a foot to two feet long, boiled in iron 
kettles on the deck — the fire maintained from the 
residue floating on the top as the l)hibbcr is reduced 
to liquid — and then l)arreled for sale. Even to-day 
between two and tlu'ee hundred inha))itants of New 
Bedford are engaged in whaUng, and if we had time 
to hunt them up we should pro])ably hear of some 
stirring adventures. 

While here we wish to see something of New Bed- 
ford itself, and proceed into the heart of the town. 
We note that 
many of the 
stores are 
closed, and 
learn that the 
occasion is 
''Clerks' 
Day," when 
many of the 
salesmen at- 
tend a great 
picnic on the 
Fall River. 
New Bedford 
is not a place 
for sight-seers, 
no guide- 
book is available. We are particularh' impressed with 
its many pretty ])ank buildings and with its broad 
good streets, the more so on account of the compara- 
tively small stores that edge these thoroughfares. We 




A WHALER AT NEW BKDFORD 



174 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



take a car ride through the town and shortly, after 
passing through a pretty residential district, come to 
a school house which interests us as being the first in 
the United States to adopt the custom of raising the 

Am3rican flag 
e \' c r 3' day 
during ses- 
sion. There is 
certainly 
n o t h i n g 
quaint al)out 
New Bedford ; 
it is a l3usy, 
thriving town 
v.'itli numer- 
ous mills with- 
in its limits. 

T a k i n g a 
street car out 
to Fairhaven 
a little town 
that m'ght almost be called a subuib of the larger 
city, we are shown the handsome home of H. H. 
Rogers, the Standard Oil magnate, who has done so 
much for the improvement of Fairhaven. Taking 
then still a third car line, in order to see what may he 
seen, we chance on a clam-bake and enjoy this favor- 
ite dish of the New Englanders. In New Bedford, as 
all over Massachusetts, we notice, too, on vacant lots 
in the cities, wagons with sides of colored glass drawn 
up, and pies being sold from them to the passers by. 
Horses are hired when a locality has been supplied, 




ABOARD A WHALER, NEW BEDFORD 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 175 

and then a new location will be tried for another few 
days. Here, too, tliere are stores wliere (h'iftwood 
and kindUng made from old whalers is sold as the only 
way of converting these hulks into cash. 

After a restful hoin- in New Bedford's pretty parks 
we are ready to go on. There is just one more place 
that we feel we must see before taking final leave of 
this portion of New England, that is the ultra-fashion- 
able Newport, the summer home of the wealthiest of 
the American plutocrats, and world-famous for its 
palatial cottages by the sea. To go home without 
seeing Newport would never do, and so thither we 
direct our steps. 

NEAVPORT, THE PLAYGROUND OF THE PLUTOCRATS 

We will make a trip b}^ train across that narrow 
neck of land which separates Buzzard's Bay from 
Narragansett, and on to the city, and in so doing bid 
Massachusetts a last farewell, at least for this Little 
Journey. Time has been rolling on and the date for 
our return is almost here. To Newport and then home 
is the tenor of our letters. 

The heart of Newport will not strike us as particu- 
larly attractive. There is a monument to Commodore 
Perry, in a little park surrounded b}' rather conven- 
tional stores; a bank, post office, etc. Wagonets are 
drawn up offering to take us over the ''city, " and so we 
resolve on a drive. We notice, as we go along, that the 
elegant victorias with which the streets are filled are 
fitted with jingling little l)ells, Uke those of the 
droschkies of Bulgaria, and learn that tlie jingling 
serves as warning, the rubber-tired wheels being 



176 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



practically noiseless. Passing in sight of the harbor, 
the government torpedo boat station is pointed out, 
and we see several torpedo boats on duty preparatory 
to the annual naval sham battle held off the New 
England coast. Not far away is the lighthouse of 
which Ida Lewis, the famous life saver, has charge; 
and in sight of the same, on the mainland, rises a 

fort ; so we 
see the gov- 
ernment has 
not neglected 
Newport. 

It is ]:)ut a 
short distance 
before we find 
ourselves 
among the 
magnificent 
estates for 
which New- 
port is famous. 
Each of these 
homes seems 
finer than the 
last, and it would l)e useless to attempt any form of 
description; suffice to say that they are magnificent 
and fully equipped mansions though occupied only 
during a month or two of the year. The names of 
their owners and the relationships of each with the 
other, which the driver kindly supplies us, embrace 
those of people constantly written about in the news- 
papers — the Vanderbilts and the Frenches, the Have- 



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GATES TO ESTATES AT NEWPORT 



CENTRAL XKW KXCJLAXD 



177 



meyers and Smiths, Lodgers, and Huttoi.s, and Davises. 
Most of these places are hounded lj}- dense woods 
succeeded 1)\ hiwns willi magnificent floral designs, 
and beyond these the homes themselves. Hedges or 
ornamental 
walks, with 
gates wliich 
are in. them- 
selves works 
of art , and 
lodges for the 
porters; golf 
links, pillared 
casinos on 
the bluffs by 
the sea, cup- 
olas or towers 
t o so m e 
hidden home, 
succeed each 
other i n 

seemingly endless array. Strangely enough, among 
these estates there is still some "country" land, and 
we find oxen, driven l^y rustic ha}^ makers, drawing 
the wagons. Down by the shore, too, where the surf 
]:)reaks on greenish slabs of stone, reseml^ling slate, 
there is a little tunnel, with a path known as "Fisher- 
men's Walk;" it being here that the fishermen won 
their case against the millionaires, who sought to run 
fences to the water's edge and so cut off the skippers' 
path along the coast, where the nets are dragged. 
Sand-pipers hop about the beach heedless of the for- 




FISHERMAN'S WALK. NEWPORT, R. I. 



178 



A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 



tunes represented on the shore from which they give 
their pecuhar calls. 

AVhile passing over the splendid roads uniting the 
'' cottages," roads hardened by daily sprinkling with 
salt water, we learn of the extraordinaril}' extravagant 
entertainments that are devised from time to time to 
amuse the jaded plutocrats. Whole opera troupes will 
be brought down from New York and entire theatres 
built for use on a single occasion; there are curious 
masquerade ])alls, and people have been known to go 
so far as to take a pet pig out in an auto in order to 

do something 
really "new." 
T h e s a n d 
other stories 
arc told as 
we marvel at 
the marble 
palace of the 
Vanderl)ilts 
and the other 
homes ( f the 
fin a :i c i ally 
famous. 

Returning 
to more cos- 
m o p () 1 i t a n 
Newport; we 
see in the cit}- park the famous old Stone Mill, a little 
edifice built of boulders, which was long supposed to 
be a survivor of the Norsemen's occupation of this, 
the coast of Vinland, but in recent years it has been 




OLD "NORSE" (?) TOWER, NEWPORT 



CENTRAL NEW EXCJLAM) 



79 



conclusivel}' proved to l)o of about the same date as 
the stone mill at Jamestown. We wish to see the 
State Capitol, and so have the old-fashioned Imildinp; 
pointed out to us; it is rather southern in style and 
fronts on a main square. To our surprise, however, 
we learn that Rhode Island has no longer the distinc- 
tion of l)eing the only state with two capitals, and 
that it is many years since the legislature resolved to 
meet at Pro\- 
iclence only. 
So we have 
had two liis- 
torical illu- 
s i o n s d e - 
stroyed in a 
very few min- 
utes. 

We will take 
tea at a typ- 
ical million- 
aire's casino, 
the verandas 
looking down 
on w lia t is 
probal)ly the 
most aristocratic tennis court in the world, and where 
young ladies in snowy lawns and young men in the 
most up-to-date attire are merrily tossing the balls. 
Newport prices, we ()l)serve, are reall}' not so very 
high, considering that it is Newport — one dollar and a 
half for half a fried chicken, a quarter less for a lob- 
ster, and an even dollar for chicken salad. This meal, 




OLD cAPiroi.. NF.wroirr. ii. i. 



180 A LITTLE JOI-RXEY TO 

of course, will be a truly "dear" reminiscence of New 
England. 

We have now seen the coast and central New 
England — historic New England, that is — pretty 
thoroughly. The other states are ^'another stor3^" 
We will hear of them and their wealth of interest 
some other time, when, we hope, we shall come to- 
gether again and make a Little Journey into Farther 
New England. 



CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND 181 



"AMERICA." 

(Sling lor the first tinio in pvihlic iit Park Street Church, Boston.) 

My country! 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 

Of thee I sing. 
Land where my fathers died; 
Land of the pilgrims' pride, 
From every mountain side 
Let freedom ring. 

My native country! thee. 
Land of the noble free. 

Thy name I love; 
I love thy rocks and rills, 
Thy woods and templed hills; 
My heart with rapture thrills 
Like that above. 

Let music swell the breeze 
And ring among the trees 

Sweet freedom's song. 
Let mortal tongues awake, 
Let all that breathe partake, 
Let rocks their silence break. 
The sound prolong. 

Our fathers' (iod! to thee. 
Author of Liberty! 
To thee we sing: 
Long may our land be bright 
With freedom's holy light, 
Protect us by thy might, 
Great God, our King! 



SOME HINTS FOR READING. 



Historic Pilgrimages. — Bacon. 

A History of the American People.— Woodrow 

Wilson. 
Students' History of the United States. — Channing 
Source Book of American History. — Hart. 
Division and Reunion. — Hart. 
The American Revolution. — ^Trevelyan. 



(Arranged as the Trip Proceeds.) 

Autobiography, Ben.jamin Franklin. 
Scarlet Letter. 
House of the Seven Gables. 
Marble Faun. — Hawthorne. 

Paul Revere' s Ride. 
Courtship of Miles Standish. 
Shorter Poems. — Longfellow. 

Essays, Selections. — Emerson. 

Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 
Standish of Standish. — Holmes. 



ARli »« 



